Business Services

How to Avoid Excluding the Wrong Targets

Nowadays, it’s common to feel like ads are following you around the Net. They are to an extent, but there is also a lot going on behind the scenes. One of the biggest reasons why you may or may not see something is that you were included or excluded from it. When you’re doing your own marketing, try to be conscious of what you are targeting. This will help you avoid excluding the wrong people.

Pay Attention to the User Experience

The best way to tell if your targeting is working as intended is to pay attention to the user experience. Visit your own landing page and click on things that you see. See if you can test load your banner advertising, and make sure that the page loads quickly and that the site is displayed at the proper aspect ratio. At a very basic level, doing this helps ensure that everyone can see your ads. Remember, we don’t all have the best in Internet connections, and it’s easy for people on a slower connection to click away from your ads regardless of whether you targeted them.

Analyze Your Data

You’ll know when your targeting has grown too much if you pay attention to your site’s analytics. You’ll notice sudden drops in traffic, response rate, and time spent. You may also notice changes to your bounce rates, or your goal funnels. These sudden drops are to be expected when you target, but they should balance themselves out over time (like raising conversion rates even though your traffic volume dropped). You may also grow suspicious if you see all traffic going down across the board. It could be a sign that you’ve excluded too many targets and should try to scale back some of the changes to your display advertising.

Bio: Ted Dhanik began his career growing brands at companies like MySpace and LowerMyBills. Today, Ted Dhanik is the CEO and co-founder of engage:BDR. Ted Dhanik also covers topics related to display advertising through various blogs, and on the blog of engage:BDR.