The good news is that demographic targeting (aka “demo-targeting”) is not rocket science. While it does require some amount of regular effort on your part, you are provided with all the world-class tools and research you need to succeed in your search advertising efforts on Live Search using Microsoft adCenter.
Select a campaign or order that’s been live for at least three months before doing your demo-targeting. Pick a campaign that has:
- Impression/click volumes no less than 50 percent of the leading advertiser for the keyword set.
- Above average bidding and cost-per-click (CPC) for keyword set, but it should not be the leader.
- A consistent ad position above-the-fold but not number one.
Use adCenter reports and adLabs research tools to identify the target audience for the selected campaign. Understand that with demo-targeting, you can:
- Bid incrementally. In other words, your demo-targeting bid is added to your baseline bid at an amount up to 100 percent of the value of your baseline bid.
- Adopt a flexible budget for your campaign to learn the optimal bidding strategy.
- Bid separately on age and gender, so plan your bidding and budget accordingly.
Make a copy of the campaign or order for which you created a baseline in step one. Apply your targets that you determined in step two. And begin running your targeted ad. Be sure to:
- Track conversions by keyword.
- Account for seasonality of your ad by running it on and off in cycles (e.g., one week on, one week off).
- Collect enough data to analyze so that you can make adjustments.
Don’t just look at the age and gender reports in adCenter—analyze them. What is the percentage of estimated impressions for your targeted demographic? And estimated clicks percentage? Are you seeing an increase in conversions? What about a decrease in your cost-per-acquisition as indicated by an increase in click share of your demographic target?
If so, congratulations! You can interpret that to mean you are reaching your target audience and it’s paying off for you. You might want to consider optimizing your bidding strategy by reducing your base bid, increasing your target, or both. Otherwise, you may need to go back to step two and do some more research on your target audience.
Register today!
It’s easy to start your Live Search ad campaign—simply provide your contact details and pay a one-time, $5 fee to create your Microsoft adCenter account.
Sign up now to see what adCenter can do for you today.
