During SMX East, Frederick Vallaeys, Justin Freid and Jon Kagan focused on match types, making targeting exclusions and audience intent to help advertisers find efficiencies.
NEW YORK – With the rising cost of CPCs, it’s always a best practice to find efficiencies within our campaigns. It’s crucial to make sure media dollars are spent on the most effective tactics and strategies. To help advertisers find efficiencies, Frederick Vallaeys, Justin Freid and Jon Kagan took the stage at SMX East to present “Spending Less & Getting More: A Comprehensive Guide to SEM Targeting.”
Frederick Vallaeys kicked off the session with a guide to match types. He noted that an important factor of efficiency is ensuring that you are selecting the right match types. Frederick also suggested advertisers segment their geographic data and plot a key metric (such as ROAS) in order to identify the best and worse performing geos. He specified that advertisers shouldn’t look at that metric as being a reflection of a strong or a weak bid but rather should be aware that some cities will be more expensive due to the competition. Lowering the bids in those cases would likely mean that the advertiser wouldn’t be able to maintain a presence in that geography, rather than improve the ROAS.
Jon Kagan pointed out that good data can mask bad data if you aren’t careful. Although overall account and campaign trends may look good, there can be poor performers hiding beneath the surface. For that reason, it’s important to really dig into all of your performance data to find opportunities to make targeting exclusions. He also suggested building audiences to target and monitor performance.
Justin Freid rounded out the session with a focus on intent. He highlighted the importance of knowing your audience to ensure that you’re targeting the best folks. When budgets are limited, focus as much as possible on users that are likely to have the highest intent. These folks can be identified by in-market audiences, affinity audiences, website audiences and audiences uploaded from the CRM. Overlaying audiences with other targeting forms can help to hone in on prospects with the highest intent.
