Building the best target audience for a better advertising campaign

When doing advertising, in any ad format, a lot of things matter. Say the creative, copy, placements, metrics/forecasting, and also the audience.

I see a lot of entrepreneurs (non-marketers) setting up advertising campaigns with highly precise targeting. Throwing the best creatives & copy they can produce, A/B test this and that, but rarely playing with the target audience. Just because it's already perfect. and in many cases, resulted in high ad costs, low conversion rates, and made the forecasting numbers irrelevant.

TIPS for new businesses with a full website like a SaaS or an e-commerce (not a lead gen campaign with a single page site (and I want to make this as short as possible focusing on the audience trick part)):

1. If the business is new, always always always start with BRAND AWARENESS. Try a little broad audience or no as you wish, or A/B test 2 different audiences. and note that this is a TEST CAMPAIGN.

2. Follow the web visitors (collected in the tracking system) with a TRAFFIC/CLICK CAMPAIGN with different creatives & copy that follow previous ones.

3. Follow the returnings with CLICK CAMPAIGN again but with new creatives and/or with a different landing page.

and then stop to review the campaign. One thing for sure is that this test campaign is cheap. Some things you'll see from the test are:

1. If your landing page is fully optimized for conversion. if you don't see any signups, leave advertising and focus on CRO

2. To gather data to create the best target audience. This will be your target audience in the next campaign.

Once you have updated your landing pages and creatives, repeat the process. If it improves, set up an actual campaign and get your sales team ready.

But, if after several tests you can not get metrics improved. I would advise you to start rethinking the offer.

This is just 1 of many advertising tips & strategies. I just hope new advertisers spend wisely in advertising especially for startups.

However if you questions please simply write to me.