Interest and Behavioral Targeting In Action

Paid ads have come a long way over the last decade - not just the duration of the ad (shorter), the number of hard cuts and length of each clip (increased and shorter), or the strategic voice of the ad (authenticity, not authority) - but the targeting of the audience has changed just as much.

Imagine a dart board. Now imagine the marketer of yesteryear aiming for their target market - the metaphorical bullseye. Now also imagine that the marketer isn't throwing a dart, but is using a firehose to hit the target. They will surely hit their target, but they're also wasting a great deal of their resources hitting people who aren't their target audience, and arguably, more resources are being wasted. We won't go into every single tactic used to switch out the firehose for the the dart, but we will go into one: Facebook detailed targeting.

The Isle Co makes a terrific product. Our goals weren't just to create a great Social-first Ad, we also wanted get it in front of prospective customers - but only prospective customers. Many people are vaguely aware that Facebook 'knows much about its users', and that's true. Facebook's data on its users is vast, and it uses the data its been given by its users for a variety of purposes. One of those purposes is assisting brands target their Ads to a very, very specific user profile so they can use their ad budget as cost-effectively as possible. We can save the conversation surrounding the ‘free-service-for-paid-ads’ conversation for later (hit me up for coffee, I’d love to discuss it, seriously!), and instead accept that this very specific targeting is the heart of Facebook’s long-term business model - and because it’s so important to their present and future success, they are quite good at it.

If you review the screenshot above, you'll notice that we are able to align this ad campaign with the demographics of The Isle Co's customers.

• Location: United States

• Age: 15-55

• Gender: Women

• Detailed Targeting: Interests of 'natural product', 'natural skin care', 'skin care'

To reach this targeted result, we ran a variety of experiments to see which variables produced the desired results: A/B tests on age, creative, as well as interest profiles. Over time we could see which ad sets produced the lowest possible CPC and drove the user to the desired outcome: visiting the website to learn more about the great products The Isle Co offers.

Oh, and creating the Ad was fun, too. Thanks to Becca, Kathy, Megan, and Zack for making the content creation process enjoyable!