When you have a specific product or service, you want to target the people who are actually going to buy or use it. You can spend hours working on SEO targeted blog posts in (sometimes) saturated markets or slowly grow your following on social media waiting for that one viral post. Or you can use interest targeting to market your product or service to the people who need it and will use it.
Think about this, let’s say your business is a product, a new fitness product for personal trainers or it could even be a service to show how fitness trainers can grow their business exponentially. Will a non-personal trainer benefit from the product or service? Probably not. So, why would you want to market to mass audiences and throw money at campaigns that won’t drive meaningful results?
Targeting based on relevance using consumer interest
Interest targeting allows you to reach people who have specific interests. By this, we mean you will be able to serve relevant advertisements to people who match that interest you are targeting. It is a great opportunity to target people as you build your brand. You know who your audience is but you need to reach them to grow your business.
Let’s go back to the example with the fitness trainer product or service and take a look at where you can use interest targeting.
Website ads
Where do you want to show your ad for your fitness product or service? Is it best served on a website on muscle cars or Muscle & Fitness magazine? Although there is a chance that a personal trainer may also be interested in muscle cars, you will have a better return on investment showing this online to the Muscle & Fitness readers. This goes beyond publications. Your ads can be targeted to people looking for gym memberships, fitness equipment, supplements and nutritional products as well. Your target market is included in a scope of topics where your potential buyer is looking. Let’s take a real-world example of what this would look like. In this scenario, we will take a look at a specific place to advertise, the MyFitnessPal app. For this app, the consumer is somebody who has an interest in fitness, wellness and healthy foods. So, businesses that benefit from advertising on this platform are selling fitness gear. In other words, a sporting goods store may find success in advertising on the app. A grocer such as Whole Foods can share an ad about its organic items and supplements section.
Precise targeting
Since your ads are targeting websites complementary to what your customers are looking at then you can make the targeting even more precise. How? By adding in location-based marketing. Location-based marketing will allow you to further target consumers on their physical location. To go back to our fitness example, if your business is a sporting goods store with a brick and mortar location then, your ad can appear when your ideal consumer is in the designated area.
You can also advertise to consumers who are searching for related products. You can retarget consumers based on their web history. So someone who was searching for a gym, pilates studio, or CrossFit gym may need proper attire and equipment for their experience.
Interest targeting allows you to get the most out of your advertisements and cut out tedious work to do it manually. Of course, we also recommended tracking all insights to continue to optimize the experience for users. However, with interest targeting, you will be able to reach qualified customers right away.