10 Ad Personalization Tips To Instantly Achieve Better Results
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Investing in the right ad personalization strategies isn’t just a “good idea” for businesses who want to increase sales and strengthen relationships with customers. Personalization is quickly becoming essential to marketing success.
Not only do 71% of customers expect to receive personalized, relevant communications from customers, but companies that excel at personalization achieve better results. According to Google, 90% of companies agree personalization leads to increased profitability.
Creating highly targeted and personalized ads is how you ensure you can increase the ROI of your marketing campaigns, reduce customer acquisition costs, and earn buyer loyalty.
Here, we’ll share our top 10 tips for better ad personalization.
10 Top Tips for Better Results with Ad Personalization
Every day, consumers are bombarded by endless irrelevant, generic marketing messages from companies all competing from their attention. Some studies even suggest that we’re exposed to between 4,000 and 10,000 ads daily, but most of them never resonate with us.
A personalized approach is crucial to cutting through the noise and connecting with customers, but over two thirds of digital marketing executives still struggle with ad personalization.
The following tips will help you make the most out of your advertising budget, and build stronger bonds with your target audience.
- Diversify your Data Collection Strategy
The first thing you need for effective ad personalization is data. The more you know about your audience, the more you can tailor the experiences you deliver across every channel. These days, you can’t just rely on third-party cookies to collect insights into your customer’s demographics or how they interact with your ads – particularly now that cookies are being phased out.
Buying access to data isn’t an option either, since 69% of customers say they want their personalized experiences to be delivered based on the information they personally share. With that in mind, look for new ways to collect data. Conduct surveys and focus groups, run polls on social media and speak directly to your target audience.
- Create more Specific Micro Segments
Segmentation is a great way to enable effective ad personalization. The trouble is, too many companies focus all of their attention on broad segments of their audience. They bundle people into groups based on their age, location, or gender, and forget to look at deeper nuances.
Investing in more comprehensive micro segmentation strategies can help you to build more effective segments. Create a series of different user personas for each section of your target audience, identifying groups based on multiple factors, such as demographic, behavioral, and psychological characteristics.
- Take Advantage of Geographic Targeting
Although the best ad personalization techniques take numerous customer characteristics into account, focusing on broader strategies with some of your campaigns can be effective. For instance, if you’re using ads to drive customers to a specific retail location, it makes sense to use geographic data in your marketing decisions.
For instance, Starbucks and affiliated retail partners used geographic targeting with the GENESISX platform to send content to customers located close to specific retail locations. Using this strategy, they increased in-store visits to specific branches by 15%.
- Experiment with Demographic Targeting
Aside from focusing on where your customers are with geo-targeting strategies, you can also use numerous other demographic details to tailor ads to unique segments of your target audience. Some of the key demographic data to focus on when developing ads include:
- Age
- Income (or purchasing power)
- Education level
- Occupation
- Marital status
Examining these details will help you to decide what kind of language to use, which benefits of your products or services to draw attention to, and even which channels to use for your personalized ads.
- Use Behavioral Insights for Ad Personalization
Personalizing your ads based on the characteristics of your audience is a good first step. However, taking their behavior into account can deliver even stronger results. Although there are limitations to how much “behavioral data” you can use, without access to third party cookies, you may be able to adjust your advertising strategy based on:
- The device: Most ad platforms, like Google can offer an insight into whether most of your customers interact with your ads through a mobile or desktop device. If you know your customers are largely mobile browsers, you can adjust your ads to be more mobile-friendly.
- Purchase history: Customers expect you to have some basic knowledge about their purchasing histories – use that to your advantage. Send tailored ads to customers when they arrive on your website or mobile app based on previous purchases.
- Browsing data: If you can track how customers move through your website, you can deliver more personalized offers with your ads. Create different pop-ups and banner ads based on which pages your customers visit, and the content they interact with.
- Use Targeting Tools to your Advantage
Most advertising platforms, including Google Ads, and Meta for Business, offer access to valuable tools you can use to target specific audience groups with your ad campaigns. Use those resources to your advantage. For instance, on Facebook, you can target people based on their:
- Interests
- Gender
- Education
- Relationship status
- Age
- Location
- Occupation
You can even target specific customers with upcoming birthdays or anniversaries, or people who attend certain conferences and events. Experiment with a range of targeting parameters to discover which characteristics you should be focusing on with ad personalization.
- Get Contextual
As advertising tools and platforms become more advanced, companies now have more opportunities to get “dynamic” with their personalized ads. With the right plug-in for your website, or an effective customer engagement platform, you can issue ads to customers that adapt based on context.
For instance, you might send different ads to customers based on the time of day when they visit your website or app. You could even promote assorted products based on the weather.
Alternatively, you could keep things simple and adjust your ads based on the products customers previously viewed on your website or app. Dynamic and contextual advertising efforts make your ads seem more fresh, up-to-date, and compelling.
- Use Artificial Intelligence
While the use of AI in the marketing space can have its downsides, it can be an incredible resource for serving personalized ads to your customers. Cutting-edge AI bots equipped with conversational and generative AI capabilities can draw on all kinds of data to deliver unique experiences to customers in real-time, whether they’re visiting your website or using your app.
You can use these bots to issue suggestions and offers to customers based on what they’re doing on your website or app, or even questions they’ve asked in the past. AI tools give you an intelligent way to guide customers through the purchasing journey, without having to hire extra staff.
- Remember Retargeting
Retarteging campaigns make up some of the most effective personalized ads. 77% of marketers already use retargeting solutions in Facebook and Instagram advertising. Not only are retargeted users easier to convert, because they’re already familiar with your products, but they may have already shared data with you that you can use to tailor your campaigns.
Use tools like the Facebook (Meta) pixel to capture data about which products customers add to their basket, then reach out to them if they don’t make a purchase.
Remember, you can use retargeting campaigns across multiple platforms. Taking an omnichannel approach to serving tailored ads to your customers throughout multiple touchpoints in their online journey can significantly reduce your cart abandonment rates.
- Track Your Results
Finally, remember that whatever strategy you use to deliver personalized ads to customers, the only way you can ensure you’re optimizing your return on investment, is by tracking your results. Pay attention to how different campaigns affect your traffic, engagement, and conversion rates.
A/B test different ad formats and strategies, to learn more about which strategies are having the biggest impact on your bottom line. The more data you gather, the more you’ll be able to ensure you’re using your marketing budget effectively.
Boost your Results with Personalized Ads
Creating personalized ads that genuinely resonate with your target audience is the key to success in today’s cluttered digital landscape. The right approach to personalization will help you generate more leads, convert more customers, and earn your buyer’s loyalty.
At GENESISX, we make it easy to create highly personalized mobile experiences for your audience, guiding them through each stage of their shopping journey.
Contact us to learn how you can use our intuitive platform to capture the attention of your customers, boost store traffic, and earn more sales.
