A common question I get asked by people who are unsure of whether or not they should go into social media, (or even online marketing,) is “why should I be present on social media or online marketing when, on average, only a small portion of people are even present there?” It’s a tough question to answer from a marketing perspective, but I feel like there is a side to social media, (and online marketing,) that most people don’t consider: avoiding people that you’re not looking for.
When you consider the costs involved in conventional marketing, a large portion of your spend on a TV ad is going towards putting your brand and messaging in front of people who aren’t in your product or service’s target market. It’s an inevitability with a blanket medium such as this, but if it were up to you, would you really want to be putting at least half of your spend towards people who are not potential clients?
With Social Media and Online Marketing, the key is not in the quantity of the individuals you reach, the quantity of non-target-market individuals you can avoid paying to reach. There are several tactics that can be employed through social media and online marketing that can make sure you do a better job of only reaching the people you want to, but I’ll focus on those in pay-per-click advertising today:
Facebook Advertising – Exclude By Age or Gender
Because of the demographical information collected during the Facebook sign-up process, it is possible to exclude large portions of individuals you don’t wish to pay to target. Whereas Facebook advertising can be a difficult undertaking and might not include people in the right phase of the buying cycle to be worth the investment, consider the options it provides to cut down on costs by not paying for age groups (or even genders) you don’t want to pay to target.
Google AdWords – Negative Keywords
This is arguably one of the best tools available to manage a cost-per-click campaign, and also the most underused. When looking at keyword lists in your Google AdWords account, if you scroll to the bottom of the page, you will see the “Negative Keywords” link which allows you to set keywords for which your ads will not display if they are part of the search query. For example, the owners of a Google AdWords campaign promoting Miami, Manitoba might want to add “Florida” as a negative keyword for their ad campaigns. I’ve seen AdWords accounts where the savings in ad spend amounted to $3000 annually.
It’s true that Social Media and online marketing don’t quite have the same reach as conventional media at this point, but this fact is certainly made up for by the efficiency they can provide you in your marketing efforts. Through employing the right tactics and avoiding paying to promote your product or service to those who are not in your target audience, you can get the most out of your advertising spend by only putting it towards the individuals you want to, and make it more valuable per dollar in the end.
Tags: facebook, google, negative keywords, pay per click, social media
