I spent 20,000 yuan, why is there not a single conversion?

“I know that half the money I spend on advertising is wasted, but the problem is I don’t know which half.”

This wise saying from marketing guru John Wanamaker can be called the " Goldbach Conjecture " in the advertising and marketing industry.

Even today when technology is highly developed, we still face the same dilemma: sometimes, after working so hard on information flow advertising , there is not even a single conversion . What exactly is the problem?

Data such as CTR and ROI can only tell us the results, but not why they happened.

Now, you are so close to the answer, just need to finish reading this article.

The following formula tells us that there are actually three factors that affect advertising conversion effects.

Conversion effect = traffic x conversion efficiency x price

Today, we mainly solve the problem of unsatisfactory traffic.

Traffic is not ideal, what is the key?

We are not unfamiliar with this. Users in the information flow environment have these two characteristics:

1. Users are just killing time, their interests are clear, but their demands are not clear

1. Users generally have multiple tags of interest, and the tags do not conflict with each other

To put it in an analogy, the information flow is like a handful of chocolate candies of different flavors, and no one can know in advance whether the next one will interest him. So users are actually waiting for the one they are interested in to appear.

Assuming that the information flow advertisement we put out is also a piece of candy, if the traffic is not ideal, we need to reflect on these three issues from the perspective of targeting:

1. Directional accuracy: Does he usually like to eat candy of this flavor?

2. Intensity of orientation: Does he prefer this flavor of candy to other flavors of candy?

3. Targeted effectiveness: Does he believe that my candy is the flavor he likes?

Specifically, what should be done?

1. Match interest tags to improve targeting accuracy

We use "precision" to describe the degree of relevance between an ad and the target audience.

In the information flow environment, users do not have very clear demands, so we no longer improve targeting accuracy by matching their needs. Instead, we let ads match interest tags. We often think about this: which tag should we target to provide the best user experience for our ads?

For example, if an automobile advertiser wants to place an advertisement, there are three optional interest tags: automobile, military, and finance .

This advertiser would definitely choose "car". Because users who are interested in cars are more willing to accept advertisements about cars, their avoidance psychology will be weaker. Accordingly, they will have a better experience with car ads than the rest of the groups.

2. Become the user's favorite and improve directional strength

We use "intensity" to describe the weight of a certain tag in all the user's interests. Intensity targeting is to find those users who say "I prefer this one compared to other interests."

Nowadays, competition in the advertising industry is becoming increasingly fierce. Advertisers targeting the same type of users may come from all walks of life: automobile advertisers, sports advertisers, financial advertisers, insurance advertisers, game advertisers ...

Assuming these ads are shown to the same user at the same time, which one will the user click on?

This is related to the priority of different interests in the minds of users. For example, middle-aged men who have achieved some success in their careers will inevitably pay attention to cars, sports, finance, insurance, etc. However, some may pay more attention to cars and will click on car ads first; some may pay more attention to sports and will click on sports ads first.

According to Baidu Index, the total number of people paying attention to cars and sports is roughly equal, but people aged 30-39 (born after 1980) pay more attention to cars, while people aged 40-49 (born after 1970) pay more attention to sports. Combined with the results of other industry research reports such as iResearch Consulting , we speculate that this is because those born in the 1980s are currently in the peak period of buying cars after starting a family; while those born in the 1970s mostly bought cars a few years ago. Although they also pay attention to this kind of information, they are more concerned about sports activities that can improve health and relax the body and mind.

So let’s assume you are an advertiser in the automotive industry. If other conditions (including budget) are the same, would you prefer to target your information flow ads to people born in the 1980s or the 1970s?

Of course it’s the post-80s generation. Because for those born in the 1980s, cars are a high-priority interest, while the opposite is true for those born in the 1970s.

This reminds us that users will be interested in advertisements in different fields, so we need to increase the "intensity" of targeting to compete for attention with advertisements from other industries.

3. Titles can arouse interest and improve targeting effectiveness

After satisfying precision and intensity, we use the "effectiveness" of targeting to describe the attractiveness of an advertisement itself to users. Sometimes traffic cannot be increased because of low targeting effectiveness.

How to improve targeting effectiveness? Let’s take a look at the following two headlines and see which one you would rather click on.

1. “Directly transfer from junior college to master’s degree in 2 years, no joint entrance examination, regular university”

2. "What should I do if I encounter a bottleneck at work? You might as well read the MBA policy analysis appointment"

With other conditions being the same, the CTR of the first post is 2.18%. The CTR of the second one is 3.09%.

Why do we get different results when targeting the same group of users?

This is because , in the information flow environment, users are not driven by demand but by interest; therefore, under the same targeting conditions, what determines the click-through rate of information flow ads is not the ability to meet demand but the attractiveness of the title to user interests.

The first ad clearly introduced its services and tried to prove that it could meet users' needs, but not many users were willing to click on it.

The second ad does not introduce the service at all, but cleverly raises a question that users would be interested in - "What to do if you encounter a bottleneck at work", and suggests that it might be useful for users to read the MBA policy analysis. It instead got more clicks.

The second ad actually increased the effectiveness of targeting by relying on a high-quality title, allowing more users to be "hit". So, don't forget that while the accuracy and strength of targeting are guaranteed, we also need to produce interesting headlines to encourage users to click on the ad.

4. Amidst the competition, orientation is still a blue ocean

We just learned that information flow advertisers are engaged in intense battles in the three sub-battlefields of "targeting intensity", "targeting accuracy" and "targeting effectiveness".

But the good news is that even with fierce competition, the targeting of information flow ads is still a blue ocean compared to search ads .

This is because targeted interest tags have a much broader market than targeted user demands, and the gap between the two is as high as tens of thousands of orders of magnitude.

For example. If the demand is directly targeted, the keyword "children's eloquence training" represents a daily Baidu index of less than 300 search volume.

But if we consider the characteristics of the targeted population, the average daily display volume of female users who are concerned about children's eloquence training in Baidu's information flow is greater than 5.88 million.

For the same thing, only a few people have a demand for it, but there are at least millions of people who are interested in it.

For the same thing, a person who has a need for it will no longer need it after it is satisfied once; but a person who is interested in it will feel lost if it is not satisfied within one day.

It can be said that if information flow advertising based on interest tags can be well targeted in terms of accuracy, intensity, and effectiveness, there will be no upper limit to its display volume.

You understand the truth, but still can't have a good day?

Now we know the answer to the question.

How to increase traffic? Three aspects of orientation are key.

1. Match interest tags to improve targeting accuracy
2. Become the user's favorite and improve directional strength
3. Titles arouse interest and improve targeting effectiveness

But this is only theoretical guidance. What should we do if we encounter difficulties in actual operation?

Good Copy Search, this tool that can search for good ideas from all over the world with one click can help us solve practical problems. It combines the wisdom of marketing experts and Baidu's big data to screen out good copywriting with high CTR across the entire network and classify them according to industry, selling points and sentence patterns. Just one-click search can inspire our creative inspiration and improve the quality of information flow titles.

With precise and intensive targeting and searching for copywriting with quality and traffic, information flow advertising optimization becomes both scientific and easy.