The social network VKontakte is a platform with an accessible and easy way for inexperienced marketers to attract targeted traffic. In this article, we will take a step-by-step look at how to set up targeted advertising on VK (Vktarget), and what strategies exist for a profitable campaign.

The operating principle when setting up this type of advertising is as follows: by selecting and turning on filters based on various parameters, you narrow the display of ads into groups target audience and craft targeted ads for her that will grab her attention and encourage her to click. The task at the testing stage is to find the hottest segment of potential buyers and select advertising for them with the best response.

Let's take a look at the stages of traffic movement from a sales perspective:

— traffic > ad > landing (site, group or VK post...) > operator (confirmation of application) > sale.

If you have your own store with a call center, you can influence all stages, except for the purchase of goods at the post office, if it is cash on delivery.

The store can collect search traffic if SEO optimization has been carried out for user requests. I recently found a useful article about checking a site for duplicate pages and their impact on the site’s rankings - read it.

If you attract visitors to a one-page landing page, you can manage traffic only in the first three stages.

But in both cases, almost 90% of success comes from knowing the portrait of a potential buyer and his location.

We come to a conclusion: efficiency advertising campaign depends on the chosen strategy and the accuracy of targeting settings for segmenting the target audience, which can only be revealed through testing - checking various hypotheses and ad-landing linkages.

Let's look at how it works, how to set up and launch targeting in VK.

How to set up targeted advertising on VKontakte.

To start working with an advertising campaign, you need to have at least one, and preferably several, hypotheses, and create ads for them and set up targeting in VK for the target audience. How to do this is described in the article “” (links open in a new tab).

To run profitable advertising and earn money, Vktarget has various filters to filter out non-target users from viewing ads. As you add settings, the user reach decreases and the recommended cost per click or 1000 impressions changes. But you must understand that the more you narrow your target audience, the higher the CTR will be and the cheaper the targeted action will be, since you will not pay for impressions to uninterested users.

Setting up VK targeting.

1. First point - geography.
   Not all countries may be allowed by the offer to accept applications (if you are engaged in traffic arbitrage through CPA networks), so we set up a filter for the required regions. We can specify the geo more precisely if we want to advertise our offer in those cities or regions where, for example, the offer operates courier delivery, or there are some other geo-based privileges that we focus on in the ad. It is also necessary to cut off countries, regions and cities with non-target audiences.
2. Next comes floor- see for yourself here, but often those who buy are not the ones you think about, so if in doubt, you can divide users into two groups and test them for conversion (this applies to all settings).
3. Age— here it is advisable to divide the target audience into smaller age groups, for example 16-18 years old, 18-20 years old,…. At the same time, you will see how the indicators “audience - recommended price” change downward in the upper right and become more and more acceptable with the inclusion of the next filter.
4. Family status- whether to indicate or not depends on the advertised product.
5. Next - interests, this parameter is not always applied, because many users indicate it in the settings when filling out their profile inaccurately and not always. The filter by interests is useful when promoting niche products, such as “bite activator” for fishermen. If a person indicated in his profile that he is a fishing enthusiast, then this is definitely your potential buyer.
   If you are interested, click “advanced settings” and look further.
6. Categories of interests- but this must be used, indicating several suitable ones at once.
7. Communities- the most important point of targeting the target audience. We indicate the places where our clients are expected to live, based on their portrait. The same applies to the point "Applications and sites".
8. Worldview— this targeting can be used when promoting narrowly niche products such as “Muslim watches.”
9. Travelers— by checking the checkbox, you will show ads to business people traveling on business trips, and those who have the opportunity to frequently travel to vacation spots.
10. Education, work- another interesting filter for understanding user requests and priorities.
11. Retargeting audiences— targeting advertising to a specific list of people, for this you need to have one.
    Mandatory on all pages of the site. Firstly, a database will be collected for the next campaigns, and secondly, already at this stage you can specify who should be shown advertising and who not. For example, you can immediately subtract from impressions those who have already visited the landing page, that is, clicked on the ad; you can prohibit impressions from those who visited the page with the order form or “Thank you for your purchase,” thereby narrowing your reach and increasing CTR.
12. Next come " devices«, « OS" And " internet browsers«.
    Let me add a trick: by specifying, for example, settings such as in the screenshot, combined with a suitable age, you can sell quite expensive goods

Now the question is - impressions or clicks in VK? When you bid per click, the promotion depends on the CTR and it is more difficult to work with clicks. This rate is used for impressions with a large reach to determine the click-through rate. To begin with, I recommend setting “per 1000 impressions” by checking the “Limit to 100 impressions per person” checkbox.

After selecting targeting settings on VKontakte, you create groups of audiences for testing. This is somewhat labor-intensive, but better than shooting sparrows from a cannon, trusting your predictions and intuition.

I repeat, sometimes you don’t expect conversion where in your opinion there shouldn’t be any, and, for example, fashionable women’s sandals will suddenly be bought more by men aged 45-50 than by girls aged 20.

To make the testing process easier, .

Attention! Moderators of social networks, and especially VK, often do not miss ads with affiliate links of CPA networks. This problem is almost 100% solved by connecting an agent account. Not everyone has this tool. CPA networks, but in most cases this useful functionality is present. The agent account is connected through the ticket system, that is, through a support request.

These are the basic settings for Vktarget - VKontakte targeting. We’ll talk about target audience segmentation strategies and testing advertising campaigns below.

• demographic and geographic filters are important components for segmenting target audiences;
• interests - this filter is not always effective in terms of targeting, since VK takes data from the network user’s profile, which he specified during registration. They may change over time, or may be initially inaccurate;
• categories of interests - they should be taken into account, this is targeting a warm audience;
• communities are one of the most important filters for narrowing the target audience and getting into its “hottest” segment.

To accurately enable VKontakte filters, we must first understand what users we need.

VKontakte audience priorities.

Conventionally, all users can be distributed according to the levels of awareness of the need for a product on Hunt’s ladder.

The user buys when he is at the last, fifth stage of choosing a supplier of goods (services), unless you have an impulse product with rush demand.

But many people don’t pay attention to this and start advertising to people on the 1st step of the ladder, regardless of the product niche, while they need to target at least the 3rd, and even then it will be “slightly warm” traffic.

Here's an example: a person wants to lose weight and chooses between working out at a fitness club, buying a home exercise course, looking for a miracle pill, or other options. It is not known what he will choose, and whether he will choose at all, but simply will not forget about the problem.

It is almost impossible to sell to audiences through Vktarget at the stage of awareness, let alone indifference, straight away, head-on. As a rule, multi-step sales are needed here to warm up through various promotions, free webinars, interesting videos, etc.

The third and fourth steps are near-target traffic with the requests “How to lose weight by summer” or “How to build biceps.” Working with him is difficult, but possible.

And the fifth stage is “almost hot” traffic with a search for a product or service by name (for example, “Seiko Watches”), as well as “hot” traffic with the additions “Buy”, “Order”, “Purchase”.

We will search for the target audience most interested in the product through VKontakte communities.

Strategies for searching target audience segments.

And so, what data on the target audience are of primary interest:

• floor;
• age;
• where he works/studies;
• where he lives;
• profession;
• interests;
• interest groups;
• VK groups;
• subscriptions/friends.

Stages of target audience search:

1. We put forward a hypothesis for finding potential buyers on VKontakte: one hypothesis - one group - one advertising campaign;
2. we search and analyze communities for the presence and concentration of potential buyers, this can be done manually through search engines and directly on VKontakte, or through paid and free parsers;
3. We analyze the found audience to draw up a portrait - we look at what other groups it participates in, what its demographic data is, geography of location, interest categories, etc.

Read articles on how to search and create social networks using a parser (free).

In large communities with broad interests, there will be a “cold” segment corresponding to the “interest category”. For example, your offer is “skiing”, and the group is called “Sports”.

“Warm” clients - in groups related to your topic (for example, “Snowboards” or “Winter Sports Products”).

The “hottest” clients are in narrow-profile communities (3000-30000 subscribers). These are active users, members of several thematic groups, participants in discussions and comments.

This also includes subscribers to communities of opinion leaders (for example, “Fans of V. Pupkin,” the world champion in cross-country skiing). Think about who could be an opinion leader in your topic, find his profile, if he has one, does he run his own group, what is the activity of subscribers in it.

Here are examples of searching for target audiences from “hot” to “cold” in descending order

After analysis, we select the best communities in terms of concentration of potential clients and add them to the list for future VK targeting.

Checking the reaction of a wide target audience

We set up and test different targeted VK advertising ads on a general audience - we are looking for effective method sample tests.

The task is to determine the overall average reaction to your offer, formulated in advertisements, targeting 25 thematic groups at once (as much as Vktarget allows for one advertisement).

• We indicate in the targeting settings: gender, age, geography (targeting advertising to which city, country...).
• We enter a list of communities - links and names (25 target selected communities - preferably small and medium-sized to begin with, it is important that they are close in spirit, in essence, and narrow direction)
• We select images with headings for 10-20 ads.

VKontakte ad formats.

• the first consists of a 25-character title, a small 90x65 image, a link domain, and an additional description. Use such teasers if you need to describe your proposal in more detail.

End your descriptions with verbs calling for action! For example: “Subscribe!”, “Join!”, “Find out!”, “Join!” (don’t forget that addressing users should be “You”).

• another format is a block with a large 145×165 image and a title with no description. You can add some text, stickers, arrows to the image using a graphic editor, indicate a price, discount, etc., if appropriate. VK skips ads when the text takes up up to 50% of the image.
  This option from my practice gives the best results in terms of CTR.

It is advisable to upload the image at least twice as large, and preferably 3-5 times, so that the clarity of the image is not lost.

Using the service, you can find many high-quality images that are not found in Yandex search, where everyone gets their pictures, which makes it possible to make original teasers.

Stage-2:

• We are creative/composing 20 ads with different pictures and headlines, if the budget does not immediately allow - 10 for now. We configure each of them for all 25 selected communities - this way we will see which of them interested users, so to speak, the average temperature in the hospital.
  I advise you to set up promotion for impressions with a minimum bid price of 1 ruble.
• We set a limit of 100 rubles. for each ad (so as not to lose money).
• We launch ads, wait for moderation and look at the results.

Stage 3 - testing.

We run one ad until the reach reaches 1000 people. (+/- 20-40 people). You don’t have to wait to spend all 100 rubles. for each ad, but you must set a limit, because if a user saw your ad 100 times and did not click, it means it is not interesting to him.

If you missed the reach mark of 1000 unique users, that’s okay. Just make your next ads with approximately the same coverage so that you can compare the same indicators for testing accuracy.

Reach and views/impressions are different numbers, we need exactly the coverage indicator! It is visible when we open the ad itself. Reach is the number of unique users who were exposed to a given ad unit at least once, and this level can be reached in 5-15 minutes.

If the reach for a specific ad is growing slowly, you need to increase the cost of 1000 impressions in the settings (this is the limit in the CPM column).

When the reach reaches 1000 people and there are no results, delete this teaser so as not to waste money.

Perhaps already at this stage you will have good ads with good results, this will be quite enough to get started.

Audience segmentation – one ad = one group.

For those who are confident in understanding the target audience, you can start right away with this. The same strategy is used if indicators have fallen or you need to save your budget.

Goal: narrowing the audience and providing precise proposals for each group.

If you are satisfied with the result even without segmentation, you can continue the campaign as long as the traffic flows. Focus on achieving landing page conversions so that all elements of your business system work in a positive manner.

Segmentation - stages.

We find the ad that performed the best – the best CTR/click cost.

1. Let's take each of its elements separately:

1. We make teasers separately for each of the 25 groups that we initially selected.

How to make and select ads for each group - the principle: we take one of the communities, analyze and see what is popular in it, what words, content and presentation the audience in this group reacts to (for which they get more likes, reposts, comments, which is often published from content).

We create three ads based on each element from the successful ad selected earlier:

a) based on the title;

b) based on a picture;

c) based on the description (text or inscription on the picture if there is one).

As a result, we have at least 9 teasers targeted at each group, taking into account both an element that has already shown itself well on average, and taking into account 1-2 other elements that are selected taking into account the exact (!) interests of the VK group’s subscribers.

We launch ads, not forgetting to set a limit of 100 rubles. for each. In the same way, we look at coverage and evaluate efficiency (CTR/cost per click).

1. We also make advertising blocks for each group separately, taking into account the interests of users (idols, what they watch, what content they like, what events they are interested in, what companies they know, who are their opinion leaders, what programs they like on this topic, what skills they want to acquire and learn and so on.).

For the ad idea, we use clues such as slang or niche words, names, brands, etc.:

— Niche language (words and phrases): roll, fly, flat, spot, park, dirt, vip...

— Idols (TOP 10 famous in a narrow niche): Denny McCaskill

— Names of the tricks: how to do a vanity, how to do a bannik, how to do a 360, bar...

— Program names: “NWD”, ...

— Manufacturers-firms: NS-bikes, fly, rock-shox, Allinatione...

— Who or what is the center of attention for the target audience?

— Popular words: street, dirt, extreme...

Use the service to select association words and use them in headlines or pictures.

Thus, these clues will provide dozens and hundreds of ideas for titles and images for new teasers.

THE ESSENCE: the number of such ads can be endless - the task is to identify the best ones with a good CTR / cost per click, and then disable all unnecessary ones that performed poorly, and set up attracting visitors through VKontakte targeting to your landing page or community.

- every 1-3 enters - an excellent result.

- every 4-5 people join - a good result.

- every 6-7 people enter - normal (like the majority).

- every 8-9 people join - the result is not very good.

- every 9-11 joins - the community needs to be improved (design, elements, photos, content, presentation, focus, etc.).

If this is a subscription page, a landing page where you need to leave your contact information::

- about 8-10% of those who transferred sign up - you can already work. It all depends on your product and customer conversion in the next stages. That is, from you or your manager who processes applications - if it is a product-service, from your series of touches - if it is information business(selling information, services).

MARK: if these are subscribers, you need to look at their reaction, so it is important to give a simple first step that will give them an incentive to contact you - a consultation, a gift, a bonus, an event, something free, etc. Mandatory for subscribers on the subscription landing page, the same is true for the VK group, especially if this is a complex service-product and you need an introductory explanation, or you need to show how you are different and better than others.

MARK: if this is a topic like information business, making money, business with strong provocative headlines, dietary supplements or something else controversial from the point of view of VKontakte moderators, they will constantly block it, and it’s difficult to create ads with whatever headlines you want (although in some cases it’s possible). Sometimes it is easier to advertise in groups for at least half the budget, and perhaps for the entire budget if the groups perform satisfactorily.

What to do if all the ads performed poorly?

1. We create another 20-40 radically different versions of teasers and repeat everything according to this checklist - we check that it is likely that they will work for these audiences (maybe they are waiting for another offer).
2. If it doesn’t help, we check another one (perhaps we set it up for the wrong people). Therefore, it is very important to know the client’s portrait accurately and it is necessary to carefully select groups to target the target audience.

There are usually much more than 25 groups, so working with 25 is a test stage. Next, you need to test new communities to compare their effectiveness with each other and understand what the problem is - in the offer or in the interests of subscribers.

Now you know how to choose the target audience for your offer, how to set up VKontakte targeting and how to test for making money through Vktarget.

Apply, good luck.

Hello, dear readers of the blog site. In the article “” we looked at a number of options for attracting interested visitors (buyers) to your resource.

It is clear that without this, any project becomes meaningless, so everyone tries to use these available funds to the maximum. We have already begun to talk in detail about, as well as about. In fact, these are wonderful tools that, with the right approach, can provide you with a good start.

But to complete the picture, it will still be necessary to use social networks. They often open up completely new horizons and allow you to reach an audience interested in your products that cannot be reached through traditional means. We have already started talking about and. However, the largest and most popular in RuNet remained unattracted by our attention.

What is VKontakte targeting?

Many people mistakenly consider the audience of the social network VKontakte to be poorly convertible, because it is supposedly mostly . Actually, yes, on Vkontatka there really is a higher percentage of shkolota than on Facebook, because there are a lot of free goodies. But this does not mean that there is no solvent audience there - it is simply more diffuse than in such social networks as Facebook, Google Plus or LinkedIn.

However, the advertising targeting methods available on Vkontakte (targeting only the segment of the audience you need) and which appeared relatively recently retargeting Easily allow you to weed out network users who are not targeted for your offer. Let me explain a little about retargeting. Essentially, it makes it possible to show ads in Contact to users you already know, whom you load into your advertising office using a list of Email addresses, or phone numbers, or IDs, or by collecting information about them on your website by installing a special code.

After the appearance of retargeting in the VKontakte advertising account settings, many even stopped using regular targeting. Moreover, how and where you collected the list of these Emails, phones or IDs is not important, but looking ahead I will say that for this purpose you can use scripts, online services and even applications for Contact. Everything works great and you don’t even need it. Below I will give examples of using retargeting that will maximize the conversion of traffic from Contact and reduce the cost of an advertising campaign.

Actually, for those who don't know, blocks with targeted advertising are shown in the left column on Contact pages (usually the ad consists of a title and an image, and in some cases a description may also be added to them):

Below them there is a button “All advertisements”, by clicking on which you can view the entire range of advertising topics that are offered to you. In theory, they should all correspond to your interests and aspirations, but in practice this is not always the case. In this and subsequent articles, we will focus on minimizing the display of our ads to users who are not interested in them, as well as making them as interesting as possible for them in order to increase their click-through rate (CTR).

CTR (the ratio of the number of views to the number of clicks multiplied by one hundred percent) in targeted advertising, as well as in contextual advertising, is used to evaluate the effectiveness of ads, and the higher it is, the less you will pay per click. Although, on VKontakte you can choose between two types of payment:

1. Per clicks
2. For impressions

To understand which payment method will be most profitable for you, you need to conduct experiments (test an advertising campaign with a modest budget - at least 100 rubles), by the way, in ninety percent of cases it will be more profitable to use the payment option “per impressions”, and only when trying to reach a huge Based on the size of the audience, paying for clicks may be preferable. Below we will talk about this in a little more detail.

The “For impressions” option will give you a lot of traffic for relatively small amounts, but with the proper skill. In the “For conversions” option, achieving a low cost per click is quite difficult (you need a good page page of ads), and it will be difficult to get a large number of clicks with this approach. Therefore, it is easier and, in most cases, It’s cheaper to use the VKontakte advertising option when paying “For impressions”.

Let's quickly go over how to create an advertising account on VKontakte (it is not active by default) and start creating an ad. Well, along the way, we’ll talk about what you should pay special attention to, and what you don’t need to bother with, because it doesn’t greatly affect the success of the advertising campaign. So, at the bottom of any Contact page you will find a button "Advertising". Clicking on it will take you to a page for choosing which tool you want to use:

Here, by the way, the second sentence “Advertising posts in communities” is interesting. The fact is that VKontakte could always be used in advertising purposes in two ways: either set up targeting in your official advertising account, or search for popular public pages that suit your topics and invite their owners to publish your advertising post. In the latter case, Contact remained seemingly out of business, which is why they started this thing (essentially, an exchange for posting entries in public pages).

But we’ll talk about it later, because today we are exclusively interested in targeted advertising and retargeting in particular. So let's click on the button "Targeted Ads". In the window that opens, you will be briefly introduced to the features of the target, after which all you have to do is click on the “Create ad” button. A form will open with a lot of different fields (we'll talk about them a little later).

You can fill them out at random for now to create a test ad. Together with it will be created your advertising account on VKontakte. After this, you will have an “Advertising” tab in the left menu, through which you can quickly enter this very account.

What is the difference between targeted advertising on VKontakte?

We will return to creating an ad, but for now I want to explain to you, How is targeted advertising different? from media or contextual advertising, and also what its feature is.

1. When using media advertising (banners, etc.), you pay to display your ad to an audience that may include your target users. Their percentage, as a rule, will be very different from a hundred (very similar to the not very strong hit of television advertising to the audience). In this regard, targeting is significantly more selective. By fine-tuning, you can ensure that you pay only for the users you need (targeted and motivated, who are potentially interested in your offer).
2. When using contextual advertising, it is linked to search queries entered by the user in the search bar (advertising in search results), or linked to his recent interests (again determined by previously entered queries) or to the content of the page on which the ad is displayed (advertising on websites partners). Targeted advertising is tied to data that the system (in our case, VKontakte) knows about the user - his geographic location, socio-demographic position, interests and much more.

But this is not the main thing. Basics difference between contextual advertising and targeted advertising lies in the degree of readiness of the potential client to buy - is he ready to buy initially or do you have to encourage him to do so.

1. In contextual advertising, there are mainly so-called “warm clients”. They go into the search, already having the goal of buying something (even if not on the first site they come across, but in general), enter their request, conduct research on quality and price, after which they come from an advertisement to your site and become your customers .
2. (they came to VKontakte in no case to buy, but to communicate), i.e. We display advertisements to users in order to arouse their interest. Next they need to be “warmed up”.
   1. For this purpose, they are used in the case of goods that are not very expensive (when it is quite easy for a visitor to make a purchasing decision). Such sales can be compared to trade in transport, when passengers decide to quickly purchase only not very expensive goods. In relation to Contact, anything that costs less than a couple of thousand rubles can be classified as spontaneous purchases (clothing may be somewhat out of this price category).
   2. Or you can direct potential customers to Contact () communities, in the case of expensive or complex goods (services), when people need time to think about it. Secondly, you “process” visitors in the community, turning “cold” clients into “warm” ones. These are the so-called “long purchases” (expensive goods, complex services, events, etc.) that require reflection. It is in the community that you explain to him the importance of your offer, its features, uniqueness, advantages, so that he is convinced of the need of this purchase. It won’t be difficult for him to join the community (if this topic is at least somehow interesting to him), after which he will start receiving your newsletter. It is possible that the process of “warming” (maturing) users may take weeks or even months, but with the right approach everything will work out.

Where to send clients from advertising - to the website or to the community?

Let's fix it once again - when to send a user from VKontakte advertising to an external site, and when to the community?

1. If the advertised product costs less than 2000 rubles. In this case, it makes sense to lead the client to a landing page (or one-page page)
2. If the landing page itself has enough information to persuade the client to buy (read about)
3. If the user does not need to pay - games, promotional sites, etc.

1. If you have a large online store, or famous brand. In this case, your need will most likely not be limited to one purchase - you need constant sales. In the community you post interesting content, which you dilute with sales posts about new products, offers or promotions. It will be much more convenient, forward-thinking and practical.
2. If you have a local business (for example, a restaurant, fitness club or cafe). A person joins a community where you can communicate with him, find out his opinion about your service, read his reviews and try to take them into account. Well, of course, with a good community, this client can become a regular one for you.
3. If you sell complex or expensive products or services. In this case, with the help of the community, you can explain to the user why this product costs so much money, why it is good and what its advantage over competitors is.

Who is targeting suitable for (advertising on VKontakte)?

1. If you have an offer suitable for a wide range of users (consumer goods). Things that are interesting to many. The wider your potential target audience, the better it will go in social networks.
2. If you have your own thematic community on VKontakte, then targeting can serve as a very good way to attract users and subscribers to it.
3. If you have an online store, then it is quite possible to successfully build sales through social networks. VKontakte will give you new clients, new sales and additional profit compared to all other methods of attracting clients.
4. Games go well through targeting and mobile applications, because it is very easy to set up advertising to those who have mobile devices or those who play on social networks.
5. Cafes, restaurants, fitness, clubs and other local businesses almost always have their presence on social networks, and attracting visitors from there using targeting would be a logical continuation of cooperation.
6. If you want to attract users to some events, concerts, parties and other events that are aimed at a wide audience, then VKontakte is perfect for you.
7. Also on social networks you can perfectly advertise various information products, seminars, conferences, coaching, etc. things.
8. To summarize, we can say that VKontakte advertising works well for customer-oriented businesses (and not business to business).

For whom is VKontakte advertising not suitable?

There are a number of service sectors and businesses that are quite expensive and not particularly effective to promote using targeting in VKontakte(context may be preferable in this case). Basically, the problem lies in the difficulty of selecting the right audience, although with the advent of retargeting (we will talk about it in great detail in subsequent articles), this problem in some cases has become completely solvable. The second problem is that most often people on social networks are not interested in these topics.

It is very difficult to promote VKontakte (perhaps with the exception of Internet marketing). Those. targeting is not very suitable for B2B outside the Internet (sales of building materials, video surveillance systems, office supplies and everything else that is configured to work with businesses that are not related to the Internet).

Firstly, it is difficult to target suppliers for the right business, and even if you get to the right network user, it is not a fact that he will want to change the supplier he already has. Secondly, suppliers are people too, and they go to Contact to take a break from work, and not continue to do it. If he needs your service, he will go to Yandex or Google and find everything there. Internet marketers actually work on social networks, so landing pages, etc. You can advertise things on VKontakte with success.

1. They walk hard complex highly specialized services(data protection, alarm systems, etc.), which are incomprehensible to most VKontakte users. It will be quite difficult to find a target audience that will be interested in this. The more complex the service, the more difficult it is to find an audience on a social network. Although, again, with the advent of retargeting it has become possible to allocate an audience for highly specialized offers, some difficulties still remain.
2. Difficult to promote with targeting medical services, because there are a lot of nuances for each of their types, related primarily to the passage of moderation (you need to collect and send certificates about your activities and coordinate such advertisements in every possible way). In addition, the cost of attracting a client may be higher than in the context, which is not good. Secondly, it is again difficult to target (select) the target audience, although you can focus on some thematic medical communities. But again, users of these communities are already “hooked” on the services of that medical center, which this community created and maintains. There must be a good reason for users to change their guidelines (for example, if your offer has a significantly lower price). Services in cosmetology medicine (plastic surgery, etc.) are being promoted a little better, because this is more interesting to the people.
3. Quite often they try to promote with targeting real estate, but this is not always effective, because finding a buyer for an apartment using targeted advertising on VKontakte is incredibly difficult. You will need to reach a huge audience to have a chance at even one sale. Moreover, nothing much can be done other than adjusting to megacities and paying age. A more promising method for selling real estate would be to create a thematic community or conduct seminars (for example, about mortgages, or how to buy an apartment), but this will require a lot of work and will add more work to you. Things are better with the delivery and rental of apartments through targeting.

The above facts in no way imply the merits of any of the above methods of advertising, they simply illustrate their significant differences. The VKontakte social network, due to its specifics, aggregates a huge layer of knowledge about the users who are registered and communicate with it. It is thanks to this that, with the proper skill, it is possible only to those network users who, a priori, will be interested in it. Well, with the advent of the possibility of using retargeting, the accuracy of targeting the user has become even higher.

1. Goods and services worth up to five to six thousand rubles are sold well on VKontakte. You can try anything that is more expensive, but the likelihood of effective sales to the audience of this social network is already decreasing.
2. In addition, it is worth saying that it is best to sell consumer goods here. With the advent of retargeting, advertising highly specialized offers has also become quite possible and effective, but it’s still easier to sell consumer goods.
3. If a product, service or brand has a community of fans on VKontakte, then this will be a wonderful help, because targeting by groups works best.
4. As a rule, it is better to direct the flow of visitors attracted from targeted advertising to an external website (or your website) than to a group or public on the social network itself. But again, you need to experiment.
5. The prices for advertising on VKontakte are slightly higher than on VKontakte, but here very quickly (with the right approach) you can get a decent flow of interested visitors, which will result in dozens of orders of inexpensive goods per day. There is an example when the owner of an online store spends two hundred thousand rubles a month on targeted advertising and is very pleased with the margin extracted from this business.

Ad moderation and basic parameters of an advertising campaign

In addition, you should know that (for example, alcohol, tobacco and other nasty things). Well, and everything else that is prohibited by Russian law. Actually, all your ads will be moderated and prohibited topics will not be allowed, but if you are contracting to attract traffic from Vkontakte for someone, then read

26.03.2018 Andrey Kushchev

VKontakte is the most visited social network not only in Russia, but throughout the CIS. This is the largest advertising platform, the vastness of which is home to numerous target groups. Each of them - potential consumer goods and services.

What is targeted advertising in VK

Targeted advertising is a tool that allows an advertiser to reach a target audience. For this, flexible targeting settings are used - parameters under which a business owner advertises his product to specific audience segments.

Every business owner has a portrait of his target audience - this is information that characterizes his client. Targeting allows the advertiser to reach his target audience - with the correct settings, advertising is shown only to those who are potentially interested in it.

When a user creates an account on a social network, he fills in many parameters - age, education, interests, religious preferences and city of residence.

Active users join thematic groups, subscribe to public pages that interest them. All this data is important for a marketer - he uses it to set up an advertising campaign.

VK has the following targeting settings:

• geography – country, city, street;
• demographics – gender, age and marital status;
• interests – targeting the communities in which the target audience is a member;
• education and work – primary, secondary and higher education, place of work;
• additional parameters – devices, operating systems and browsers.

Taken together, this information allows you to find clients for each business.

How targeting differs from other types of advertising

Target (literal translation from English - “goal”) is an exact hit in the desired target audience. When used correctly, with proper settings and creative advertising materials, this tool achieves high conversion rates.

For example, teasers are the cheapest and, as a rule, untargeted advertising. Teasers are located on websites of an entertainment nature - these are those intrusive offers in which they often lie, hoping for the naivety of the user.

Most marketers use teasers to “pull out” the most naive and pliable audience from the Internet and sell them some kind of fake, miracle drops for potency or anti-aging ointment.

In terms of sales effectiveness, the target competes only with the context. If the context is the display of ads in search results, then the target is promotional offer VKontakte, which is seen by a potential buyer or client.

Setting up targeted advertising - 5 main steps

Setting up an ad includes 5 main steps. Each of them deserves special attention.

In order for a campaign to bring results and pay for itself, its preparation must be approached extremely responsibly and creatively.

Stage 1. We draw up a portrait of the target audience

A marketer must know everything not only about the product he is promoting, but also about its potential buyer, so you should always draw up a portrait of your target audience. It includes the collection of all information about the client - gender, age, interests, needs, psychological characteristics, preferences and purchasing power.

Promotion in VK costs a lot of money. In order not to waste them and get a return, always study your target audience and draw up a portrait of it. Focus on the client's needs.

Stage 2. Let's move on to creating an ad

To launch a campaign, you need to go to your advertising account.

You can do this in several ways:

1. Click on the “advertising” icon at the bottom of the page.
2. Through your own community on VK – hover over the group’s avatar and click “advertise”.
3. In the settings of the main menu items, add “Advertising” - this is the most convenient and fastest way; the link to your account will always be displayed in the upper left corner of the page.

After this you find yourself in Personal Area, in which all campaigns and statistics on them will be displayed.

Stage 3. Upload a picture and write text

Text and pictures are tools for attracting attention. Remember that you have competitors and you must be one step ahead of them. Therefore, we post only creative and high-quality materials.

The purpose of the text is to motivate a person to click on the teaser or follow an external link. Template phrases will not work; you need to come up with something catchy and creative that maintains intrigue.

The best such services:

• Publer is a universal tool for analyzing competitors’ posts and teasers;
• AdSpoiler – popular service to collect information about competitors.

The trial period for such services is free.

Stage 4. Configure the parameters of the target audience

Once you have a ready-made portrait of your target audience, adjusting these parameters will be easy.

Select age, gender, city and other settings. Special attention you need to pay attention to interests - this is a key parameter for finding a narrow audience. Add the publics that your target audience is a member of. Choose “live” and active communities, not just everything in a row. This will allow you to weed out non-target users and increase the effectiveness of the campaign.

Stage 5. Launch the campaign and make changes

After filling in the parameters, launch the RK. Before doing this, look at how it looks and whether everything is configured correctly. This is important, since not only the effectiveness, but also how much money will be spent on promotion depends on the correctness of the entered characteristics.

Create as many campaigns as possible with different images and texts and test them. Improve the good ones and create new ones in their likeness; delete the bad ones. This will increase your earnings and save your budget.

Price issue

The price depends on the audience coverage and is determined through an auction - whoever pays the most will see the offer to users.

The cost of each advertising campaign is individual and depends on the skill of the targetologist, audience and competition. The cost per click can cost 0.1 rubles, or maybe 100 rubles.

After setting up the ad, VKontakte will show the recommended cost per click or 1000 impressions. It is better to set the initial price several times lower than the recommended one and adjust it after moderation. If the twist is low, increase it; if it is too high, you can lower it.

Payment Methods

The choice of payment method determines the effectiveness of promotion - promotion, impression coverage and pricing. All these criteria are equally important.

There are two payment methods - for clicks and for impressions.

Targetologists agree that there is no single correct solution to this issue. The effectiveness of each of them is verified by testing. At the initial stage, several advertisements with different payment methods are created and its return is checked.

For the transition

Pay per click means stability. You pay a fixed cost per click and are guaranteed to get a return on your ad. The cost is determined by auction.

CTR is an indicator that determines click-through rate.

For impressions

Paying for impressions allows you to increase or decrease the price at any time. The speed at which the ad is displayed and its reach depend on price changes. The higher the price, the faster the turnaround. To find out the optimal cost, you need to start with a low price and increase it until the spin speed is optimal for your advertising campaign.

Paying for impressions will save the budget, but only if the target audience is selected correctly. Conversely, if the audience is not configured correctly, you risk losing your budget.

Why my ad did not pass moderation - an overview of possible reasons

VKontakte moderation rules are very strict. If you violate at least one of them, the ad will not be missed.

On average, moderation takes 12 hours – sometimes more. Technical support VK doesn't respond quickly either. Therefore, you need to familiarize yourself with the rules in advance so as not to waste time going through moderation again and communicating with support agents.

Everything that is prohibited Russian legislation or by the legislation of the country targeted is prohibited by moderation rules. First of all, this applies to copies of goods, counterfeits, counterfeit goods, medicines and other drugs.

Errors in title and text

Ads containing grammatical errors are immediately sent for revision. If the text does not correspond to the topic of the ad, it may not be missed.

Links to other social networks

Promotion of alcohol or tobacco products

The sale of alcohol and tobacco products through a social network is prohibited. If you plan to advertise these groups of products, VKontakte is not for you.

Even if your ad mentions alcohol or cigarettes, it will not pass moderation.

Low quality image

Pixels should not be visible unless this is a special marketing ploy. For example, photographs in which the face is not visible are not accepted due to their low quality. You can’t see the face—you can’t identify the person in the photo. The advertiser may not have the right to use this photo.

The subject of the ads does not match the landing page

When promoting third-party resources, it is important that they coincide with the topic of the ad. For example, in your ad you are selling an iPhone, but on your landing page you are selling copies. This is a scam, so the moderator will not let it through.

The text covers more than half of the image

If there are inscriptions on the picture, they should not interfere with viewing the image. This is only possible if the picture is abstract or is specifically used as a background for the inscription. Whether such advertising will be missed or not is determined individually each time.

About the mistakes that novice targetologists make, watch the video:

Conclusion

What is targeted advertising on VKontakte and how to use it

Dear readers of our project dedicated to making money on the Internet. Today we will talk about the type of advertising that last years gained great popularity - VKontakte targeting.

In this article we will define this type of advertising, figure out what types it is divided into, for whom it is suitable, etc. Of course, many people use Yandex and Google contextual advertising or teaser networks to promote websites, products and services. However, you shouldn’t rule out the possibility of increasing your income and visibility using social networks.

VKontakte targeting - what is it?

Let's start our material by defining what targeted advertising (target) on VKontakte is.

Targeted advertising - an advertisement aimed at showing a specific group of users with the same interests, views, hobbies, etc. An ad typically consists of a text headline, an image, and ad text.

So in news feed

We will talk in more detail about the types of advertisements below. If you are an active user of this social network, you have probably come across this type of advertisement more than once. They are placed by advertisers and shown (ideally) to interested users.

For example, you are a member of the FC CSKA group, then you may be shown advertisements for the sale of paraphernalia of this football club, tickets for matches of this team, etc.

And after you create your first advertisement, this item will be placed in the left column in the quick buttons.

VKontakte distinguishes two options for paying for targeted advertising:

Pay per click- You pay if the user clicks on the advertisement.

Payment for impressions - You pay a fixed rate for 1000 ad impressions.

Features and differences of targeted advertising

Now I would like to talk a little about what features the target has and how it differs from other types of advertising on the Internet.

Differences between targeting and contextual advertising

In the case of targeting, you select users based on their gender, age, hobbies, social status etc.

In contextual advertising you get hot and warm customers who are ready to purchase a product or service. By entering the query “Buy an iPhone with delivery in Penza” into the search engine, you will receive a hot buyer who is ready to purchase this product.

At Target, all customers will be cold, since they initially do not plan to buy anything. Users log into the social network to read the news feed, communicate with friends, and view new media files. And your task is to interest the client in purchasing your product or service by displaying targeted ads.

Teaser advertising is shown to all users who go to selected sites. Typically, in teasers you simply set the topic of suitable projects (for example, gambling) and your ad will be shown to all visitors to these sites. The cost of one attracted client will be significantly lower than in the target, however, the majority of such clients will turn out to be non-targeted.

In the case of a target, you can set up advertising campaigns more flexibly by setting gender, age, status and other parameters.

Basic terms in targeting

It is also worth studying the basic terms that you will need when working with targeted advertising. These terms are suitable not only for the VKontakte social network, but also for any other advertising company that uses targeting.

CPC ( costperclick) - cost of clicking on an advertisement. Suitable if you have created a pay-per-click advertising company.

CPM ( costpermile) - cost of 1000 ad impressions. Suitable if you choose to pay for impressions.

CTR ( click- throughrate) - ad effectiveness. Shows the ratio of views to clicks.

Coverage- the number of users to whom your ad was shown.

Transitions- the number of clicks on your ad.

Impressions- the number of impressions of your ad.

Types of advertisements

Advertising posts in the news feed - This type of advertising involves placing advertising posts in the users’ news feed. The advantage of this type of targeting is the ability to view ads both from a computer and from a mobile phone.

Carousel - ideal for offering various goods or services. You can add from 1 to 10 products that will be displayed to the selected target audience in the news feed.

Universal recording - suitable for any promotion. You can add any post that complies with the rules of the social network and attach any attachments to it.

Record with button - in this type of ad, VKontakte allows the use of various calls to action (buy a product, follow a link, etc.). In this type of advertising, only payment for impressions is available.

Advertisements on website pages - a category that has been working since the moment advertising became available on VKontakte. This type of advertising will only be displayed to users who use full version social network.

There are also three types of advertisements:

Application - a special type of advertisement for VKontakte applications.

Community - using this type, you can promote your communities, public pages, groups or meetings.

External site - suitable for those who want to start advertising an external site on this social network.

Who is targeting suitable for?

Many targeted advertising experts claim that absolutely anything can be advertised on VKontakte and this advertising will generate income. In fact, it is not always possible to select a target audience that will be interested in your service or product. For such niches, there is a Retargeting system - showing advertising to users who are already interested in your product. But here you need to have a base of such users, or install a “Pixel (a small code that will track visitors to your site)” on your site. But this is a separate big topic, which we will talk about in the following articles on our website.

Let's figure out who targeted VKontakte advertising is exactly suitable for.

- Community owners

Naturally, it is possible and necessary to promote communities on the VKontakte social network using targeted advertising. This will allow you to attract new subscribers using one of the few non-prohibited methods.

- Consumer goods

Products with a large target audience also sell well. The wider the audience, the greater the chances of making a good profit.

- Games, applications

- Online store

You can quite successfully promote your VKontakte online store. Target allows you to increase profits and find new customers.

- Information products, meetings, events, etc.

- Cafes, clubs, restaurants, fitness, etc.

If you are the owner of one of the above businesses, we recommend that you create your own VKontakte group and start attracting users there. This will significantly increase awareness and gain new customers.

- Landing pages

In this category, promotion using contextual advertising will be more successful, but sometimes it is worth analyzing targeted advertising. In some cases it can bring more income than everything else.

This is just a small list of what can be advertised using target. In any case, if you need new clients, you should try looking for them on social networks. Create several ads and analyze how effective they are in your case. Only then can you say with confidence whether it will suit you this type advertising or it is worth looking for alternative methods.

Specialists in targeted advertising in social networks came to the attention of a special project by Rusbase and Kokoc Group. Eduard Novikov, head of the targeted advertising department at ArrowMedia (Kokoc Group), talks about how to recognize unprofessionals in them.

Other materials in the series:

1. Similar experience

Of course, it makes sense to give preference to an experienced contractor, because a novice targetologist will need time to figure out how to “catch” audiences. Part advertising budget It may take a lot of experimentation and it’s not a fact that they will bring results.

What to do?

Before deciding to choose a contractor, ask if he or she has experience in the area of ​​your business. But don't leave if he's missing. Despite the difference in subject matter, just in case, check whether there is a match in the target audience. For example, the ability to attract the attention of mothers and parents in general will be useful both for promoting comics and for advertising a teenage clothing store.

If a potential contractor has charmed you so much that you are not afraid of the lack of experience in a similar project with a similar audience, ask for a portfolio of other projects.

Focus and try to understand the specialists' approach. Read on for where exactly to look.

2. Interview

A competent targetologist first conducts a detailed interview with the client and receives maximum information about the target audience (TA). For example, the target audience of a residential real estate developer is people planning to buy an apartment.

However, the specialist must take a broader view and know their interests. If a developer plans to develop infrastructure (build kindergartens and schools), it means that potential clients either already have children or are planning to become parents. Following this logic, you can expand your audience reach, avoid competition with other residential complexes and increase conversion.

Unfortunately, many inexperienced or lazy targetologists limit themselves to one interest - real estate. As a result, the audience quickly ends and conversion is low.

What to do?

If a specialist is not interested in detailed characteristics of the target audience, find out on what basis he plans to target advertising.

3. Tools

Banners and advertising posts in the news feed are classic social media promotion tools that targetologists traditionally offer to clients. But if a specialist limits himself only to standard tools, the likelihood of increasing is small.

The specialist must at least tell the client about new tools and offer to test them.

What to do?

If the agency is limited to standard tools, perhaps their experience has shown that, for example, look-a-like is ineffective for a certain segment of the business. However, my advice is to do the test anyway. Search advertising will work in any case, and if a specialist does not talk about this channel, you should think about collaborating with him.

4. Teaser advertising on VKontakte

Connecting teaser advertising with interest targeting through the advertising account is tantamount to draining your budget. Banners in the teaser block of the social network can be placed through Yandex.Direct and Target Mail.ru, which means that a brand that enters directly through the VKontakte advertising account will have to compete with ads from these contextual advertising systems.

In addition, teaser advertising works exclusively on desktops, which, given the widespread use of smartphones, reduces the reach of potential customers. Thus, with low efficiency, the tool “eats” a significant part of the budget.

What to do?

Check with a specialist exactly how he plans to target teaser advertising. If you collect the ids of users who are members of certain communities, then at low cost the conversion may be good. And if we are talking about standard settings based on interests, say goodbye to money.

4. Setup

The next point worth paying attention to is audience segmentation when setting up advertising campaigns (AC).

Let's say the target audience on VKontakte and Target Mail.ru are users aged 20-45 years. An experienced specialist will divide it into groups in at least 5-year increments: 20-25 years, 25-30 years, 30-35 years, 35-40 years, 40-45 years.

1. Firstly, this way you can manage your budget wisely. Attracting an audience of 20-25 years old, as a rule, is more expensive, because most advertisers want to reach this segment of users. And if you combine it with others age groups, the average cost per click will increase.
2. Secondly, segmentation will allow you to more accurately analyze promotion results. The narrower the audience groups, the easier it is to understand which of them worked better.

Exception - Facebook, where instead of segmenting by age, it is better to separate Instagram and Facebook audiences in a single advertising account.

The audience of the former is cheaper than the latter, so the division will help reduce advertising costs and evaluate the effectiveness of a particular site.

What to do?

Often, information about audience segmentation is not indicated in the media plan, so you will have to study the campaign settings in social media advertising accounts. For example, in “Target Mail.ru” in the “To” section, target users should be divided into groups by age.

As a rule, the division is also reflected in the names of the campaigns.

6. Tags

In order to analyze the effectiveness of an advertising campaign, each advertisement must contain UTM tags. Everyone knows this, but still in many campaigns that come to us for audit, the markup covers only the top level of campaigns.

The most common mistake looks something like this: the values ​​source (source), medium (payment model) and campaign (campaign name) are specified, but content (ad content) and/or term ( keyword). As a result, you can analyze the effectiveness of a campaign, but not a specific banner.

What to do?

If you're lucky enough to see your own ad, click on it and look at the URL. But if the advertising is customized according to interests, it is difficult to find it on social networks; you need to go to the brand’s advertising account. In the settings of ad groups, for example, in “Target Mail.ru”, read the utm tags in the “Links” or “Link tags” fields.

An example of correctly placed UTM tags: utm_source=vk_am&utm_medium=cpm&utm_campaign=object&utm_content=7&utm_term=poisk

7. Ad texts

An experienced targetologist knows how to compose ad texts and knows, for example, that they should contain a call to action. If the text is not written correctly, potential customers will not understand what product or service the advertisement is promoting, what the brand is calling them to do, and the conversion will be low.

What to do?

Some specialists make edits to the client’s text, others write it themselves. But if the targetologist does not take part in the preparation of texts at all, there is a high probability that he will attribute the low results of the advertising campaign to the bad text that you provided.

8. Waiting time

Let's say the targetologist has passed all the previous check points, but the result is significantly lower than predicted. Take your time, perhaps not enough time has passed.

1. Firstly, the timing of campaign evaluation depends on the cost of the product or service. The more time it takes the target audience to make a purchase decision, the later it is worth talking about the results. For example, you can analyze the results of promoting an electronics store a week after its launch, but in the case of a developer, you will have to wait at least a month.
2. Secondly, the reason may be large quantities tests. Starting from targeting, the number of which also depends on the approach to understanding the audience, to segmenting campaigns by age. If, for example, VKontakte audience parsing is used, then it can take a week to develop and collect groups of users, after which actual testing begins.

What to do?

Clarify the reasons for low results. When there are a large number of tests, it is worth running them one by one. But if a month of promoting everyday goods, such as clothing, does not produce results, most likely the targetologist made a mistake in the settings of the advertising campaign.