Why you should NOT run targeted advertising for your business

On the Internet, you will find plenty of articles and social media posts that give a thousand and one reasons why you should use targeted advertising, claiming that without it there will definitely be no sales, and that it is a kind of magical “money” button—once you turn it on, a stream of orders will pour in.

It is NOT worth launching targeted advertising for your business if:

1. You are not ready to allocate an “adequate” budget for this channel. It is not one of the cheap options. And the cost of purchasing advertising increases every year, because more and more advertisers appear in this system and compete for consumers’ attention. Yes, you can set a minimum daily budget in the system—$1 per day. Will this bring you any results? No! The budget will simply be wasted.
2. You do not understand the unit economics of the niche in which you are doing business. Selling a phone case through targeting and selling an expensive car are not the same thing, right? On average, the standard cost of a purchase through advertising equals 10% of the product’s price. It’s not hard to calculate what the cost per purchase will be when promoting phone accessories or T-shirts. And what the cost of a target action might be when advertising real estate or luxury items.
   Targeted advertising for complex and expensive niches does exist, but the client acquisition cycle and decision-making process regarding a purchase will be somewhat different. You’re not going to buy a brand new Porsche after seeing just one Instagram ad, right? At most, you’ll sign up for a test drive at the nearest dealership if that was the ad’s goal. Does advertising for premium cars work for one-click purchases? Of course not! But does advertising an expensive car work for brand awareness and as a touchpoint in a complex CJM (customer journey map) structure? 100%!

About 90% of your advertising campaign’s success depends on the quality of your content, profile packaging, and the technical characteristics of your pages. You could write a separate article or take a short course just to cover this list of requirements. But as an example, we’ll show you two screenshots of content from two different pages in the same niche and price range. And you can decide for yourself which page you would choose to place an order with.