Correct targeting. Targeted advertising on VKontakte: detailed instructions for setting up and launching

Social media has a large audience. This creates huge opportunities for entrepreneurs. After all, a properly configured advertising campaign provides a business with customers for a long time. But there is a downside - even minor errors in the settings lead to an empty "drain" of the budget. You need to be able to properly target VKontakte advertising. Therefore, in the article we consider the key target options.

Ad types

Targeting is a fine-grained segmentation tool target audience. With it, you can choose from all the visitors who are suitable for us according to the goals of people. Moreover, the resulting group is subjected to additional screening of non-target consumers. And this means that only really interested people see your banner.

On the pages of VK

Here is the setting of targeted advertising VKontakte of three types:

1. Application. Suitable for promoting internal games and services social network.
2. Community. Designed to promote groups and upcoming events.
3. External site. A universal option that provides for placing a link to any page on the Internet.

There are five external display formats for the listed publishing methods. They are not available for all targeting types. And each has its own characteristics. For ease of comparison, we summarize the data in a table.

Note! It is not necessary to select the size of the pictures in exact accordance with the data in the table. It specifies the minimum resolution and aspect ratio. The rest is easy to do using the standard editing tools in Contact.

For each option, you set the title to 33 characters long. It is displayed in bold.

This is only one way to place targeted advertising on VKontakte, we will discuss how to set it up below. We only note that the effectiveness of such ads falls. This is due to the banner blindness of users. Due to the frequent appearance of irrelevant links, people unconsciously begin to ignore them. Therefore, we developed a radical new way promotion.

In the news feed

These advertisements appear when visitors to the social network view news. They merge with the publications of their friends and communities from the subscription. Often, users do not even realize that they are switching to content paid for by the service. There are four types of display:

1. Carousel. It is a horizontal ribbon consisting of product cards. They can be from three to ten. And for each, you can show two prices: old and new. This is how you inform customers about discounts.
2. Recording with a button. Looks like a normal post. The only difference is that you add a button at the bottom with a call to action, for example, buy or call. Its functionality is configured separately.
3. Universal module. It is fully consistent with the classic VKontakte posts. Supports photos, text descriptions, geotags and more.
4. Collection of applications. Suitable for marketing or educational content. It looks like a form in which visitors enter their contact information: from the name and phone number, to the country of residence and birthday.

Unlike banners on pages in Vkontakte, for publications in news feed no need to enter a photo and title in a rigid site template. Therefore, advertising records have quite flexible options.

Setting up the target audience

We have listed all possible ad types. Now let's look at how to set up targeting in VK with their help. As a result of these actions, we will ensure the display of the selected display type among the users of interest to us. To do this, we segment the target audience according to a number of parameters.

Note! It is better to do a separate project for each segment of potential customers. This helps to quickly adjust the work during the analysis of promotion effectiveness.

Geography

There are two ways to track social media users:

1. By region.
2. By location on the map.

In the first case, we indicate the country and cities. In the second, the possibilities are much wider. After all, we choose the location with high accuracy. Down to geographic coordinates. There can be up to a hundred such points. For each of them, specify the range. It determines the location of the potential location of customers. The options include both adding and excluding regions.

Moreover, the service determines the location not only by IP address. Profile data, Internet connection locations and frequency of being in the selected area are taken into account. And this means that, having set up targeting in VK for residents of Novokuznetsk, they see ads even if they are temporarily in Moscow or St. Petersburg.

Demography

• Floor. Men are less active, but buy faster. Women are more likely to follow links, but less likely to reach the result.
• Age. Directly affects solvency.
• Family status. The status is not always true. Moreover, the option increases the budget by an order of magnitude. It is better to use it when absolutely necessary. For example, for a wedding agency or a children's animation studio.
• Birthday. Suitable for publications with goods dedicated to this holiday.

If possible, it is necessary to lead different categories of people to separate projects. After all, a schoolgirl girl and a married forty-year-old man need different banner designs.

Interests

AT in general terms it is very difficult to tell how to properly set up targeted advertising on VKontakte using this tool. The problem is that the information in the profile is rarely filled out completely. However, it does not always correspond to reality.

Therefore, the only setting that deserves attention in this section is display in communities. Here we indicate the groups in which our target audience is supposed to be. Moreover, both adding and excluding publics are available.

Education and work

This section deserves attention only as an additional option. People are more likely to leave this part of their profile blank. And if they do, then the same position can be indicated in several variations. Therefore, a thorough analysis of the target audience pages is required.

The advantage of this method is that you can literally prepare a personal appeal to the person in the ad.

Extra options

For some businesses, it is important not so much to use “internal” VKontakte targeting as the ability to set up retargeting for visitors to your own site. It provides for the connection of audience groups collected in the database by special scripts.

A gradation of visitors is available by browser type, operating system and device from which they enter the social network. Using these settings, we further segment the solvency of potential customers. The feature is also useful for game and app developers.

Setting the price of advertisements

Two options are provided:

• CPM - payment for impressions. The amount is set for every 1000 views of your post. Moreover, with the help of the limit, the number of demonstrations to one person is limited. This allows you to exclude inappropriate views.
• CPC - pay per click. The cost of this option is much higher. But you get a guaranteed transition to your link.

If you are just starting to figure out how to launch targeted advertising on VKontakte, it is better to choose CPC first. As a rule, this method is cheaper.

When setting the target in personal account VC indicates the recommended cost of placement. It is often overpriced. In test mode, it is enough to set half of its value and watch the result.

Click-through rate (CTR) is important here - the ratio of the number of clicks to impressions. A low score indicates that the audience is not interested in your offer. There are two reasons for this: the target audience was chosen incorrectly or appearance the banner does not stimulate the transition. This means that the campaign needs to be adjusted.

As soon as we achieve a CTR indicator, at which views are cheaper than clicks, we can change the price for CPM.

Analysis of advertising campaign statistics

Impossible without this tool efficient tuning targeted advertising in VK. There is a high probability that the allocated budget will be wasted. Therefore, be sure to analyze the diagrams on the main page of your personal account. There are four options available:

• transitions;
• impressions;
• expenses.

All of them are displayed on the timeline. Therefore, it is possible to view information for any period. Sharp fluctuations in the schedule are an occasion for a detailed study of the changes. By clicking on the name of the project, we see detailed reports.

When promoting a community, additional statistical data is available in its control panel on the "sources of referrals" tab. When advertising a site, web analytics helps to draw the right conclusions. To do this, you must first affix UTM tags.

It is important to remember that the purpose of studying statistics is to determine what changes give a positive trend. It is the multiplication of the “right” actions and the exclusion of the “wrong” ones that make it possible to minimize the cost of each advertising transition.

In the article, we have analyzed in detail how to make targeted advertising on VKontakte. We studied the main tools and principles of their choice. Now you can self-advertise your community on social networks and minimize your budget.

Social networks are not only a communication tool and an entertainment resource. They also allow people and companies to talk about themselves. But to succeed in this business and attract new subscribers, you need a strategy.

A set of targeting mechanisms is built into VKontakte advertising, thanks to which you can recognize and even create images of ideal buyers, in addition, this is one of the cheapest promotion methods. If this is your first time setting up a campaign on this social network, then be prepared to go through the path of trial and error. Don't forget that this is normal, as experimenting and problem solving is part of the job of content managers and social media professionals.

It is important to learn how to effectively use behavioral patterns in advertising, as well as certain events that occur in the lives of users. Fortunately, VK now has a huge amount of useful information for targeting, and you can direct your efforts to both existing and potential customers.

What is "social targeting"

Social targeting is a method of attracting the target audience (CA) through advertising in social networks. It is related to other types of lead generation, such as demographic or behavioral targeting. While pure interest-based targeting allows advertisers to find customers based on similar online behaviors (such as what sites they have visited), social targeting combines this logic with social network logic to help brands find people who are connected to the most typical representatives of the existing clientele.

Let's take an example. Targeted ads for running shoes may appear in front of the user's eyes because they spend a lot of time on sports sites. An ad for the same shoe on a social network will hit him because he is a friend or otherwise related to the person who bought the sneaker from the advertiser last month.

Any type of targeting involves dividing the market into segments and concentrating marketing efforts on a few of them, including customers whose needs and desires are most fully satisfied by your products / services. That is why it is important to first set up (Buyer's Persona) correctly, and only then move on.

Understanding the target audience

To set up an advertising campaign, you need at least a basic understanding of your target audience. Let's say you sell fitness overalls in the city of Penza. Your potential client is young women aged 18 to 35 living in the Penza region who are interested in clothing and sports. All these details will matter when setting up targeted advertising.

Conduct research on the target audience using analytical tools like Yandex.Metrica or Google Analytics, or at least just look at the statistics on the visitors of your VKontakte group before you start targeting.

The good thing about social targeting is that users themselves provide information about themselves, and you can use it to interest the most relevant of potential buyers. That being said, it’s important to choose a platform that suits the particularities of what you have to offer.

Why VKontakte? Media potential

Social networks are becoming an increasingly powerful information tool: many get their news from there, and the degree of trust in social networks is higher than that of central television. According to data published by VKontakte, the number of monthly users who come in search of content exceeds the audience of Channel One (83.1% vs. 74.5% respectively), CTC (74.8%), TNT (68.5%) and Russia- 1 (69.9%).

This is a huge public, covering the whole country, and quite solvent:

According to Mediascope Web Index as of December 2018

What does it mean? A large VK audience consists of 70 million who regularly visit their profile and not only read updates, communicate, view and leave comments under photos and videos, but also find information about products and spend money!

It is a mistake not to use such a resource, and if you want to promote your products and services competently, then read on and figure out with us how to do it.

Advertising formats

1) Carousel - suitable for promoting goods and services, because it is a "flip" format, where you can include several images at once (from 3 to 10), text, price, address, call-to-action button (Call-To-Action Button, CTA);

2) Universal entry - may consist of a simple description, image and text, or also contain a gif, map, video or other types of attached documents (up to 10 attachments in total);

3) A post with a button — a picture + one of the options for a CTA button (“Buy”, “Go”, “Join”, etc.);

4) Collection of applications - a relatively new option, somewhat reminiscent of the idea of ​​a lead form: by clicking on an ad, a person goes to a questionnaire that you can customize to receive the necessary information;

5) Website Advertising - The newest format for advertising, as the name implies, third-party sites. The good thing is that it should not be associated with any community: the link directly leads all traffic to the desired site.

2. Advertisements(text-graphic block, TGB) is an advertisement that you all saw on vk. com under the menu on the left. It usually looks like a photo and text under it. No more than three such advertisements are displayed on one page. You can choose from the following subspecies:

1) Application - for making transitions to an application or game posted on a social network;

3) External site - to promote a third-party resource.

Targeting VKontakte

To get started, prepare a platform where people will “land” to whom you will show ads. If it's an external site, create a custom landing page with a single action goal, like buying a product or signing up for a workshop. To develop a successful landing page, contact professionals or.

If you are advertising, say, a community on a social network, make a special post that repeats the text of the advertisement and contains additional details. It is desirable to fix it at the top of the community page so that those who come from promotional post visitors immediately understood that they had come to the “address” and did not engage in unnecessary scrolling.

Step 1. Choosing a format

We go into our advertising cabinet link https://vk.com/ads?act=no_office or https://vk.com/adcreate Click on the "Create ad" button, we get to the following screen:

Step 2. General design

After specifying the link and domain of the advertised object, you will be redirected to the design page, where you will need to enter a title, upload a logo and an eye-catching image, create a description, select an inscription on the button (for example, "Open" or "More"), and also come up with text next to button. In addition, to increase the effectiveness of your ad impressions, you will be asked to select a topic (auto, business, pets, sports, etc.). You are also required to indicate the age marking if the content has any restrictions on this parameter.

After that, the ad view after publication will become available:

Step 3. Targeting the target audience

1) Geography. The cost of clicks and impressions depends on this parameter. You can select the country, individual cities, and regions that are relevant to your business, or, conversely, exclude locations where you don't want your ad to appear. When choosing all of Russia, remove Moscow and St. Petersburg - this will reduce the price (set up a separate advertising campaign for them later). Additional settings for other types of ads include geotargeting by city area, metro station, and street.

2) Demographics. Here you choose floor(any, male, female). Consider the characteristics of the public: male - the most solvent, female - the most active.

Correct targeting according to the age should be based on the analysis of the target audience. For example, if this is a blog about sports, then you will be of the greatest interest to the category 18-44 years old. By narrowing the selection, you reduce the reach of the audience, but at the same time direct your ads more precisely.

Birthday(today, tomorrow, during the week) - a column that has meaning for holiday goods, for example, flowers, gifts, sets of socks, etc.

Family status- not the most accurate column, since people for various reasons do not indicate their marital status or relationship status, but if you need to set a filter for advertising your application only on those who are actively searching, then you can do it here.

We recommend ignoring the first field "Interests and Behavior"(not everyone indicates the scope of their hobbies, and you will greatly reduce the circle of those who will be shown ads) and pay special attention to "Communities". Select really active, not dead, groups with an active subscriber base and include them in this list (in total, no more than 25 groups can be added). You can also exclude certain communities or target ads when a community is active (for example, when creating an event such as a sports photo shoot or competition).

Subgraph "Apps and Sites" makes it possible to show ads to visitors of certain sites (if the VKontakte widget is installed on them) and to those who have specific applications installed. The most “hot” traffic comes to specialized sites, corresponding to the characteristics of your target audience, and such targeting can be extremely effective. Monitor the most popular sites in your niche and enter them in this field. If necessary, disable the visibility of ads for users of other sites and applications using the filter "With the exception of".

Setting "Travelers" is needed in order to cover people who have gone abroad, but continue to use VK.

4) Education and work. A setting that is important for those who want to promote their products and services to students / graduates of certain educational institutions or people of specific professions. A questionable filter, given that people often provide incomplete information, do not mark their professional path at all, or compose non-existent biographies.

5) Additional options. Allows you to retarget those users who were already interested in your site or group, but left or have not returned for a long time. Retargeting advertising campaigns are very effective because you further narrow the circle of ideal potential buyers to those who have already converted (followed to you, clicked a button, filled out a survey or bought a product) and again remind them of your brand or the need to complete the action they started.

Retargeting groups are created by uploading an existing contact database (TXT or CSV file) or by inserting a special JavaScript code (the so-called “VKontakte retargeting pixel”) into the source code of the site, which will track users of interest to you.

- another parameter related to retargeting, but by events. They will be needed, in particular, in order to exclude from retargeting users who have taken an action with an advertising post: positive (for example, following a link) or negative (for example, clicking the “This is not interesting” button).

Step 4. Post Schedule

Setting the time for ads to appear allows you to choose. You can customize your option if you know when the audience is likely to read your posts or make purchases:

Select working hours:

Or weekends:

But when promoting the community, you will already have more opportunities. So, there will be a choice between paying for clicks and for impressions. The latter is suitable for those who have limited funds for advertising. Reduce the recommended price by at least half. If you notice that the ads are working well and you have a large audience reach, switch to pay per click.

Turn on the limit of impressions to 100 per person if you do not want the effect of media fatigue: after some point, the annoying appearance of the same ad will tire those who were not interested in advertising and did not switch to it at the beginning or middle of the campaign.

Step 6. Payment and launch

To start advertising, in your personal account, go to "Budget" and click on the "Top up" link. Deposit money using any of the suggested methods: through bank cards, payment systems or terminals (option for small businesses and individuals) or via bank transfer (only for legal entities). You yourself determine the amount of rubles to deposit. After making the payment, don't forget to run the ad. Go to the "Advertising Companies" tab, change the status to "Launched" and make sure it's updated.

Requirements and rules

Before your ad can get to a potential buyer, it will have to be moderated. Therefore, consider the following nuances:

• There are a number of things and services that are unacceptable for advertising on social networks (alcohol, drugs, weapons, adult products, gambling and pyramid schemes, healing, etc.).
• It is very difficult to promote a number of VKontakte products and services, since many permits will need to be provided. This list includes ads. medical goods, medicines, financial services, insurance, jewelry and furs, food, pawnshops, charities, lotteries, etc.
• The text of the ad must comply with the norms of the Russian language, be correctly composed in terms of grammar, not contain profanity, correspond to the essence of the advertised object and the content of the page to which the link leads.
• Images are uploaded to high quality. Negative or explicit content is prohibited.

Before starting a campaign, please read the Advertising Rules. If approved by the moderator, the advertising campaign starts automatically; if there are violations, you will be notified and you can correct them.

When the ad is running

After launching an ad, be sure to monitor its performance. You may have to change the image, text, title, time of appearance in the feed several times, advertising format and even targeting options, such as narrowing it down by launching separate ad campaigns for different genders, ages, regions, interest groups, etc. The more accurate the segmentation, the more likely it is that Vkontakte ads, which are perfectly targeted, will reach the right eyes and ears and you will get the desired conversion (which means your money will be well spent).

Monitor your ad's Click-Through Rate (CTR) to see what works best. VK marketing is different from contextual advertising, to which a “warm”, prepared audience reacts. Therefore, show your imagination and try to find an original visual and textual presentation that will arouse the curiosity of the user who habitually scrolls his feed.

Keep in mind that there is no single right kind of ad - after a while you will need to come up with a new one and put it through tests. If you don't have a large budget, experiment by putting in a small amount to start or by lowering your rates.

Conclusion

The challenge for a targeting marketer is simple: create customer personas and then give them what they're looking for in the form of an engaging ad post. However, keep in mind that you cannot rely on creativity alone. To stand out in the crowded social media feeds, it is important to be able to respond to user preferences and reach the right segments of your target audience. Therefore, audience targeting is a mandatory and effective component of successful social marketing.

Fortunately vk. com gives you advanced targeting options and you can find your customers through a whole range of categories covering demographics, user types and their interests.

Therefore, test your creative, find one ad that attracts the most attention, and then experiment with the audience settings in the ad account - this is the only way you will understand how to create effective and budget-friendly VK marketing campaigns.

High conversions for you!

Dmitry Dementy

You say that VKontakte advertising does not work well: some schoolchildren click on ads, the entire budget is spent overnight, but there is no result? This happens if you choose the wrong target audience. In this article, you will learn how to properly target Vkontakte in order to show ads to the right people.

How VKontakte targeting works

Imagine that you are advertising auto repair services in Smolensk. You can display ads in the most popular VKontakte communities and wait for a response. If the ad says "Car repair in Smolensk", customers will surely turn to you. The problem is that you will pay for ad impressions to residents of Penza, Irkutsk and Vladivostok. In addition, you will spend money on showing ads to users from Smolensk and other cities who do not have a car. Moreover, you are pumping money into advertising services for people who drive expensive non-breaking foreign cars. And you specialize in the repair of domestic cars, and you have direct deliveries of spare parts from AvtoVAZ.

In order to spend money efficiently and make deals, you should show ads only to Smolensk residents who have a car. It is desirable that the ads be seen by people with not very new cars, which are suitable for spare parts from AvtoVAZ. This problem can be solved by targeting the target audience.

With the help of targeting, you practically exclude inappropriate ad impressions. For example, don't spend money advertising a Pattaya holiday to schoolchildren who are still interested in football and puppets, and not walks along Walking Street. Targeting ads brings the following benefits:

• Increase response: clicks and deals.
• Cost reduction.
• Reducing the cost of customer acquisition.
• Preventing negative user reactions to inappropriate advertising.
• Show ads to audiences of competitors.

With the help of this guide, you will learn how to target an audience on VKontakte.

How to properly target Vkontakte

Choose an ad format: Image & Text, Large Image, Promote Communities.

Enter a title and text, upload an image, select a theme. If necessary, you can set an age limit for impressions. At this stage, do not spend a lot of time on these actions. The task is to move on to audience targeting.

To use targeting effectively, you need to know your audience. To collect user data, research the market, survey real customers, use the buyer persona method. You can also read about it.

For the experiment, imagine that the company operates in the Krasnoyarsk Territory. You serve clients in all cities of the region, except for Zheleznogorsk. It is known that you are most often contacted by female office managers between the ages of 20 and 50 years. Another group of clients - IT people large companies, 70% of whom are men. Their age also ranges from 20 to 50 years.

How to set up geographic targeting

Target the audience groups suggested above. First, select the geography of ad impressions. Set the target to Krasnoyarsk Krai and exclude Zheleznogorsk.

How to set up demographic targeting

As mentioned above, your potential clients include women who work as office managers, as well as men and women who work in IT departments. Therefore, in the "Gender" section, leave the default value. Choose male or female only if you are selling a clearly male or female product, such as spinning rods or color cosmetics. Keep in mind that in this case, too, you cut off potential customers, for example, women who are fond of fishing.

Specify the age of the audience. Under the terms of the experiment, we agreed to target customers aged 20 to 50 years. This is a wide age range, so specify it unchanged in the settings. If the age of most customers is in a narrow range, such as 25-30 years old, try expanding target group. Specify the age from 22 to 33 years old and evaluate the results of the campaign.

If necessary, limit the audience of impressions to birthday people.

Skip the "Marital Status" menu. Use it only in exceptional cases, for example, if you sell gifts for Valentine's Day.

When and how to use interest and interest category targeting

In interest targeting, you can select audience segments. These are users who are currently interested in a particular product and are ready to buy it. For example, an advertiser may show ads to people who frequently shop online, look after a car, or are interested in financial services. VKontakte classifies users into audience segments based on their activity on the social network and on external sites.

How to target community members

The idea is very simple: if you show ads to members of thematic communities, the response will be higher. For example, you can show ink cartridge refill ads to members of all related communities in the selected region.

To find suitable communities, use the VKontakte search. You can change the search criteria using the filter.

Also use the allsocial.ru service, with which you can search and rate communities. Be sure to exclude members of your community from your audience. Most likely, they will see the publication anyway.

Show ads to users of specific apps and sites

This task is solved using the "Apps and Sites" filter. Enter the name of the site of interest and save the options suggested by the system. At this stage, you can evaluate the potential reach and the feasibility of targeting the audience according to the selected attribute.

If necessary, block any sites or applications from being shown to users using the "Exclude" filter. Check the "Travelers" box if you want to show ads to users who visit VKontakte while traveling abroad.

What to do with targeting by education and position

Look for the target audience by education only if you are interested in graduates of specific educational institutions. You can also target users who have recently graduated from an educational institution.

Use position targeting as a last resort and very carefully. This method of targeting can greatly narrow the audience or add untargeted people to it. First, not all users indicate the position. Secondly, the target audience can be people who indicate all the places of work on the page.

For example, filter the audience by position if you want to show ads to specific professionals. For example, use this type of targeting if you sell dental equipment. Keep in mind that ads will not be seen by dentists who have not indicated their profession in their profile.

How to use retargeting

Users who are familiar with your business, product, website or VKontakte public respond to ads many times more often than a cold audience. This is a great reason to use retargeting.

To use retargeting, go to the appropriate menu in the VKontakte advertising account. Click the Create Audience button.

You can create an audience using a retargeting pixel or data from a file.

Upload a file with a database of email addresses, phone numbers or user profile ids. Check out requirements for uploaded information or use these suggestions:

• Use a CSV or TXT file.
• Write to one address, id or phone number per line. You can also write data to a string separated by commas or semicolons. You can find out the user id using applications.
• Specify the phone number in the following formats: +71111111111, 71111111111, 8-111-111-11-11.

You can also install a retargeting code on the site. In the "Pixels" menu, generate a pixel.

Copy the code and paste it on the site.

If the site is powered by WordPress, it is convenient to insert the code using the Head, Footer and Post Injections plugin.

Use the Edit menu to add/remove an audience or get the retargeting code again.

After populating your retargeting audience, create ads and launch your ad campaign.

What services increase the effectiveness of Vkontakte targeting

With the help of external services, you can improve the accuracy of target audience targeting and make advertising more effective. Pay attention to the following sites:

To increase the effectiveness of advertising, it is necessary to collect data on different segments of the target audience using one or more services. Save the received data in CSV or TXT format, and then create the appropriate retargeting groups.

Audience targeting is available in ad automation services such as Aori , Plarin , Sociate.Targeting . Targeting capabilities are standard here, but automation systems provide advertisers with the ability to simultaneously manage advertising campaigns on several sites.

How targeting increases the effectiveness of Vkontakte advertising

In this section you will find successful and bad examples targeting the target audience of VKontakte. Check out the big

Two facts. First: VKontakte is the most popular social network in Runet. Secondly, there are a lot of anti-cases on the Internet about VKontakte advertising - about how ineffective it is.

A simple conclusion suggests itself: not everyone can competently set up a targeted campaign from scratch. In this post, I tried to reveal all the nuances and features of the VKontakte advertising account, so that even a beginner can set up effective targeting.

If you want to save time on targeting and quickly recoup your investment in advertising, order advertising from specialists:

Decide on the target audience

Take the relevant data from Yandex.Metrica or Google Analytics (Audience tab in the left menu). If there is no information about the target audience, you need to build a hypothesis about who your potential buyer might be.

When you have decided on the target audience, select the options for placing ads. Will you advertise your VKontakte community, or attract users to the site to make a conversion.

Next, create an overall budget for advertising campaign. Also, be sure to set a test budget, as you cannot launch a campaign without a test. First you need to check the audiences, banners and all settings. Remember that testing takes at least 2-3 days.

How to calculate the budget?

To calculate, you need to know the formulas and indicators that are used in targeted advertising:

• CPC - pay per click;
• CTR - click through rate, defined as the ratio of the number of clicks to the number of impressions, measured as a percentage;
• CPM - payment for impressions (VKontakte pays for 1000 impressions);
• CR is the conversion rate.

Two formulas can be used to calculate the budget, depending on what type of payment you will be using:

1. Budget = Cost Per 1000 Impressions (CPM) / 1000 x Impressions.
2. Budget = cost per click (CPC) x number of clicks.

Where can I get the necessary CTR to calculate? If this is your first campaign, use the average value for VKontakte (0.03% for teasers, slightly higher for the feed). In the future, take the arithmetic average of the campaigns carried out.

You can also use these formulas for calculations:

1. Impressions = Clicks / CTR.
2. CTR = clicks / impressions.
3. Clicks = Impressions x CTR.
4. Cost per 1000 impressions (CPM) = budget / number of impressions x 1000.
5. Cost per click (CPC) = budget / number of clicks.
6. CR (conversion rate) = number of conversions / number of clicks.

Consider an example:

Send

Our subscribers always get more.

When you have calculated everything, you can go to the VKontakte advertising account and create banners and targeting.

However, you can do it differently. First, go to the advertising account, set up approximate targeting in order to understand what approximate cost you will have for clicks or impressions, and then do all the calculations and start creating banners and fine-tuning targeting.

How to set the cost of advertising?

In fact, all audience settings affect the cost of advertising. Changing at least one leads to a change in the total amount. VKontakte always shows the coverage of the target audience that matches your parameters and the recommended price in the right corner of the advertising account.

1. Bottom line. At this price, you will be able to reach approximately 70% of the audience.
2. Upper border. At this price, you will be able to reach more than 90% of the audience.

It is impossible to cover 100% of the entire audience. Not all VKontakte users access the network regularly, which means they will be able to see your ads.

What to choose: pay for clicks or for impressions?

It all depends on the specific advertising campaign: many factors influence the payment method. But if you are just starting to master targeting, I advise you to choose pay per click. This way you will only pay for specific clicks on your ad. If you choose to pay per 1,000 impressions, you run the risk of wasting your budget if your targeting is poor.

Be sure to set limits on all ads. This will insure against unnecessary write-offs and help control the budget.

How to work with the VKontakte advertising account?

Click "Targeted Ads" and select "Create Ads".

Consider three main options for placing ads (VKontakte also offers advertising in the VKontakte Application, but this is a topic for a separate post):

1. Communities.
2. Community post.
3. External site.

1. Community advertising

Click on the “Community” item and in the window that opens, select the group or page that you want to advertise. Click Continue.

There are four ad formats that can be used to promote communities:

1. Image and text.
2. Large image.
3. Community promotion.
4. special format.

All formats, except for the special one, will be shown to the user on the left - under the control panel. Therefore, this type of advertising, it is also called TGB - a text-graphic block, is available only for the desktop. Ads of these formats have a general auction.

Image and text

Ad Format:

• title - up to 33 characters;
• description - up to 70 characters;
• image — size 145x80 pixels.

This ad format is often used when one picture is not enough, it is necessary to add a description of the advertised object. Here it is recommended to use a call to action not only to inform the user, but also to encourage them to click on the ad to perform the desired action: join the community, buy a product, and so on.

big image

Ad Format:

• title - up to 33 characters;
• image — size 145x165 pixels.

If you're using this type of ad, it's important to find relevant images because the first thing a person notices is the image. In this format, the image is the basis of the ad. Such banners attract more attention.

Community promotion

Ad Format:

• The image is 145×145 pixels in size.
• The title is unchanged. The name of your community is automatically pulled here. But if the title is longer than 33 characters, the text is truncated. Sometimes for community ads in this format, it is recommended to temporarily change the name to a shorter one so that the ad looks good.
• The number of subscribers.
• Subscribe button.

The banner also indicates how many subscribers are in your community, but the data is rounded. Additionally, there is a "Subscribe" button so that the user can become a member of the community in one click, excluding an extra step - going to the community. But if you're just starting to grow your community and don't have many members, this listing of subscribers can turn users off.

special format

A special ad format for communities is separated into a separate auction. Such ads compete for display only with ads from other communities of the same format. Ads of a special format are shown in the user's VKontakte news feed.

In the case of using a special community advertising format, the image must have a contrasting background, that is, the use of light shades of the background and white color is unacceptable.

Ad Format:

• image — size 256×256 pixels;
• title - unchanged, the name of your community is automatically pulled up; by default, the title can only fit 33 characters, but in fact the title is truncated to 15 characters;
• indication of the number of subscribers.

2. Advertise the post in the community

Most recently, VKontakte added a new toolkit - now you can advertise not only specific posts from your community, but also make hidden posts. The latter will be advertised in the user's news feed, but will not be published in the community.

Which one to choose depends on your goals. For example, if you have only one post in the near future with important information, you can post it in the community, and then launch an advertising campaign.

If you need to advertise on a lot of products, but you don’t want to clog the community feed, then use hidden posts. In addition, you can create not one, but several banners for one target audience in order to test. In this case, hidden posts are also suitable.

If you are creating an ad for an existing post in the community, simply copy and paste the link to that post into a blank box and click Continue. All targeting settings for the ad will open.

If you need a hidden post, click "Create Post", select the community for which you will create an ad, and start posting.

To create such ads, you need to specify a link to the page of the site where you want to bring users. The domain will be pulled up automatically. Click "Continue" and proceed to create an ad.

• large image;
• image and text.

When you have decided on the creative and made a great ad, you can start setting up targeting.

Setting targeting options

First of all, choose the topic of the ad and the subsection to which your ad belongs. There may be several subsections. These parameters are filled for moderators. What you choose here does not affect audience settings. For some types of advertising, age restrictions must also be indicated.

All further settings already apply to the audience that you select to display ads.

1. Geography of users

The column "Except" is needed to remove some settlements from advertising. For example, you select broad targeting for all of Russia, but exclude Moscow and St. Petersburg.

In the columns "Regions", "Metro stations", "Streets" you can specify certain locations where users will see the ad. For example, you advertise a store located in the Akademichesky district of Moscow. You can consider residents of the area as potential buyers.

2. Audience demographics

Select the gender and age of the target audience. Relevant data is taken from user pages. But not everyone fills in full information about themselves, so when choosing, for example, targeting women aged 25-35, you do not take into account women who did not indicate their gender or age. For more precise adjustment to the target audience, it is recommended to use other parameters.

The Birthday option can be useful for some products and services. So, you can offer people who have a birthday coming up to buy gifts with a special discount. There are cases where this setting really worked.

The Nescafe campaign, targeting female usernames and cities, received over 1 million views in a month.

The marital status is chosen by the user. This option can also be successfully used. For example, if a girl is proposed, she changes her marital status to "Engaged" and immediately starts seeing advertisements for wedding dresses, stylists, and photographers.

3. Interests of users

In this block, various interests are configured. You can choose one of the interests for each ad and track the reaction, or combine parameters to narrow down the target audience. But don't limit your audience too much! If you select from two or more parameters, then only those users who match all the selected parameters at once, and not one of them, will fall into your targeting.

The "Interests" parameter is the hobbies specified by the user on their page. There are many interests, start typing the one you need in the field and it will automatically pull up if it is on the list.

Advice. Remember that users do not always fill in their interests. And if they fill in, then in the future they either do not change them, or they do it very rarely. Therefore, interest targeting may not always produce the expected results.

It is better to use "Categories of interests". They are calculated based on user interaction with VKontakte communities and external sites on various topics. Now there are not so many categories of interests, and they are quite general. Soon the VKontakte team promises to expand this list by adding narrower categories.

4. User communities

Another interesting option for setting up ads is "communities". Here you can select any communities that you think may be in potential clients. For example, if your audience is accountants, they are most likely subscribed to accounting publics, as it is important for them to keep abreast of news about changes in legislation.

Pay attention to the number of subscribers, their activity within the public, the frequency of publishing material. If the last post in the community was six months ago, it is unlikely to be interesting.

Advice. Use parsing services - there are paid and free ones that will help you more accurately segment your audience. Among other things, parsing services allow you to collect subscribers of communities of the desired topic, to identify among them active ones who are members of several communities.

The "Exclude" option allows you to remove from targeting those communities that you do not want to advertise. Often they indicate their community here, whose subscribers are already up to date with news and promotions.

5. Applications and websites

Here you can specify the sites on which the user logs in through his VKontakte account, or using various applications that the visitor uses. They can be excluded from targeting.

VKontakte also allows you to select the user's religious affiliation.

If you tag travelers, the service will collect all users who visited the VKontakte website from at least two different countries over the past year.

6. Education and work

When choosing an average or higher education service allows you to select certain educational establishments and training time.

You can also select user positions. The data for this parameter is collected from users' personal pages.

7. Additional options

Devices, operating systems, and browsers used by users can be selected from the proposed list. It is enough to start entering the required parameter.

But let's take a closer look at audiences for retargeting.

This is a very important parameter that you should definitely use if you have your own website.

How does retargeting work?

Retargeting- a tool that allows you to show advertising materials to users who are already familiar with a product or service or have visited the site before.

Retargeting allows you not to miss "warm leads". So, if a person went to the site from contextual advertising, looked at the product or even put it in the cart, but didn’t buy it in the end, VKontakte retargeting will help to “catch up” with the user on the social network. This way you increase conversions on the site.

For VKontakte, it is better to collect an audience of at least 1000 people, but it is better to start with 3000 or more users.

To set up retargeting, you need to generate a retargeting code (or pixel) and paste it on your website. Then VKontakte will be able to collect site visitors so that in the future you can catch up with them with advertising.

To create a pixel, you need to follow three simple steps:

1. Specify the name of the pixel.
2. Specify the domain of the site where you want to paste the code.
3. Select a theme for the site.

Now you need to copy the resulting code and paste it on the site between the tags and. If you don't have access to the site code, just contact your system administrators (or developers).

Until you install a pixel, it will have a "not working" status. After installation, the status will change to "working". From now on, you can start creating and configuring retargeting audiences.

Retargeting Audiences

Audience - a customizable VKontakte user base that you can target your advertisements. The audience can be filled in two ways:

• load from file;
• get from the site using the VKontakte pixel.

To create a retargeting audience, you need to go to the "Audiences" tab and select "Create Audience".

In the window that opens, the service offers two options for collecting an audience: using a pixel, or by uploading a file.

How to create audiences with a retargeting pixel?

With a pixel, you can create two types of audiences:

• all site visitors;
• users who visited individual pages.

To create an audience of all site visitors, you must:

1. Enter the name of the audience.
2. Select the previously created pixel from the drop-down list.
3. Specify the rule "All site visitors".
4. Select the time period for which you need data: for all time, for a month or a day. The time period can be changed later at any time.
5. Save the audience.

To create an audience of users who visited individual pages, you need to:

1. Specify the name of the audience.
2. Select a pixel.
3. Select the "Users who visited specific pages" rule.
4. Specify a time interval.

   Then you can select the required options. Here you can specify users who visited a specific page of the site, for example, a product card. To do this, you need to insert a link to a specific page into an empty box and select the appropriate rule from the drop-down list - it depends on the link whether it will change or not.

5. Save the audience.

How to create an audience using a list?

It is enough to select the source "Load from file" in the window that opens. Next, you need to select a file on your computer and upload it to the advertising account. VKontakte will automatically find users for you based on the data provided.

What data does the system “recognize”?

• email addresses;
• telephones;
• User IDs.

Please note that uploaded lists must match

Advertising in VK allows you to place ads on the site vk.com through the advertising account of the social network. The better the targeting in VK, the higher the probability of attracting customers and recouping the investment in advertising. On the VKontakte social network, you can advertise communities (groups, publics, events), external sites, applications, promote your posts, collect applications.

What is targeted advertising VKontakte and how it works

Targeted advertising is advertising that is aimed at a specific audience. For example, your company delivers flowers in Moscow. This means that solvent residents of Moscow, and not Penza or St. Petersburg, should see advertising. Another example is if you want to promote an iOS app. It is logical that only owners of iOS devices should see ads.

Setting up targeting in VK is the setting of ad parameters for the desired audience. For example, by geo, age, interests, device type and operating system, browser, education, place of work, and so on. You can create an ad group for different targeting options.

Advertisements in the news feed

The ad is shown in the news feed. The advantage of such advertising is that it is unobtrusive and organically fits into the feed. For this format, there are 6 types of ad posts: carousel, universal post, ad in stories, post with a button, claim collection, site ad. For advertising, you can create a separate post or use a ready-made post on the community wall.

• Carousel- allows you to add several link cards to an ad, suitable for advertising several products, services or communities at once. There can be from 3 to 10 cards. Under each card, you can make your own description and add an action button.
  
  
• is a post with an image, video, GIF, or document attachment. Used to increase coverage. A prerequisite is to specify the community on behalf of which the advertisement will appear.
  
• Ads in stories- the ad is shown in user stories. They look like ordinary stories, they are good for promoting discounts, talking about new products in the store, and increasing brand awareness. In one of the articles, we already wrote about how to set up ads in VK stories.
• Recording with a button- in such an ad there is always a call to action: buy something, join the community, follow the link. It looks like a universal post, but there is a button at the bottom of the ad. The button name is customizable. If you have indicated a phone number, you can select the inscription "Call, Sign up, Book", if you indicate a link to the community, select the inscription "Join", etc.
  
  
• Collection of applications- this advertising format is needed to collect contacts. It allows you to receive applications directly in private messages in VK or email. It’s convenient because you don’t need to create a landing page or a separate page for collecting leads. Here you also need to specify the community on behalf of which the advertisement is published. In the settings, you can insert the pixel code, so that later you can set up retargeting for those who opened but did not fill out the form. The button will say "Fill" or "Register". More: How to run an ad with a form for collecting leads in VK.
  
  
• Site advertising- ad to get traffic to the site. Outwardly, it does not differ from the "Record with button" type. The main difference in the settings is that for this type of advertising, it is not necessary to have a community, and the entry can only lead to the site. To navigate through the advertisement, the user just needs to click on any area of ​​the post. At the top of the post, it’s no longer written “Advertising Post”, but simply “Advertising” or “Site Advertising”. We wrote about advertising sites in VK in one of our articles.
  
  

This format is available only in the desktop version of VKontakte. Ads are displayed on the left side of the screen below the menu. Displayed as banners. There are 3 types of ads available here: app ads, community ads, or external site ads. For these types of ads, only the design differs, but the targeting settings, payment models, and sites are exactly the same. In all ads, you can specify the subject and age marking.

Application- for those who need to install iFrame and Flash applications in VK. Click on this type of ad and enter the name of your application. Next, click the "Continue" button.

Ad formats:

• image 145 px x 85 px and text
• square image 145 px x 145 px
• special 256 px x 256 px
• application showcase with a picture 560 px x 315 px

Below there will be targeting settings, ad display time, price and placement settings (advertising platforms, display limit, choice of ads) - as we have already said, this type of settings is the same for all formats.

Communities- if you need subscribers to a group or page. Click, enter the name of the community, click "Continue".

There are 3 ad formats here, otherwise everything is the same as in the advertisement of the application. Ad formats:

• image 145 px x 85 px
• large image 145 px x 165 px (no text)

Community Promotion - looks like a 145 px x 145 px image with the name of the community and the word "Join" at the very bottom.

There are only 2 types of banners - an image with text and just a picture. Ad formats:

• image 145 px x 85 px with text
• large image 145 px x 165 px

Everything else, as in the examples above.

Market platform

Retargeting and look-a-like

How much does VKontakte advertising cost?

• Pay per impression– CPM (Cost Per Mille). You pay a fixed price per 1,000 impressions. Here you can increase or decrease your bid by adjusting the amount of impressions. The minimum price for 1,000 impressions: 30 rubles (website advertising and advertising post), 50 rubles (advertising in stories), 1.2 rubles (advertising on the site pages).
• Pay for optimized impressions oCPM- ads are shown to users who are most likely to perform the desired action. This method is only available in the "Collect Applications" format.
• Payment for transfers– CPC (cost per click). Here you pay for every click on an ad. Only unique clicks are paid. Minimum price per click: 1 ruble for advertising a site or an advertising post, 6 rubles for clicking on a banner from VK pages.

Which model to choose and how to determine the budget?

CPM is best used when you need to increase brand reach and awareness. oCPM is suitable for getting leads without going to the site. CPC is chosen when the main objective– get referrals or referrals + leads.

The budget depends on a lot of factors, such as the price and quality of the product, seasonality, competition in the market, the duration of the advertising campaign, and geo. For example, advertising in central Russia (Msk, St. Petersburg and their regions) will cost more than advertising in more remote regions.

Example:

You want to earn 100,000 rubles a month. One sale brings 1,000 rubles net profit. So you need to attract 100 customers. Conversion from an application to a client is 25% - it turns out that you need 400 applications. How much are you willing to pay for 1 lead? Let's say 100 rubles. Then your budget for targeting in VK is 40,000 rubles per month.

However, remember that with poor campaign settings, lack of understanding of the goals of the AC, inability to determine your target audience, you can drain any budget.

We decide where we will be placed - in the news feed or on the pages of the site. Depending on this, we select a specific type of advertising.

• If you need to promote several products/services/communities at once, choose a carousel.
• If you need to increase brand reach and awareness or inform about new products, promotions and discounts, we choose a universal post or advertising in Stories.
• If you need to provide some kind of action, for example, joining a group, subscribing, or going to a site, select Record with a button.
• If you need transitions only to the site, then you can select the type "Website advertising".
• If you need to collect applications in VK - select "Collect applications".

Let's take a closer look at setting up a record with a button - this is one of the most popular advertising formats in VK. It looks like a regular post, but allows you to get the targeted action from users. Click "Record with button" and below click "Create new".

Step 2:

Design: picture and text of the ad

Write the body of the post. Attached is a picture or video below. Even lower, the title of the site is automatically displayed, it can be changed manually.

The name of the button can be changed - VK offers several options: go, open, learn more, buy, buy a ticket, go to the store, order, sign up and so on.

Advice: do not make the text too long, structure it and use emoticons. Pick a picture that catches your eye. How to choose an image for a creative, read below.

Step 3:

Setting up targeting for the target audience

This is the largest section of settings, here you need to be very careful.

Geography

Everything is simple here - we select the appropriate country, cities and regions (you can select a specific street and metro station), which cities need to be excluded. This section is especially important for regional business. For example, you make pizza in Samara. So we choose, RF, Samara, you can specify the streets next to your pizzeria.

Demography

Here, too, everything is simple, choose gender, age, birthday and marital status, if all this is important for your business.

Interests

Here you already need to understand your target audience. In the first section, select a category that fits your business or may be indirectly related to it. If we are promoting a site with articles on Internet marketing, then we look at which of the proposed topics may be suitable for our target audience. For example, it could be those who are interested in business services. You can add several categories or choose just one.

You can also target your competitors' followers and show your ad to the followers of specific communities. This is especially true if you could not find the right categories. Communities can be found in the search or downloaded as a separate list. Here you can also select activity in certain groups (because a person can be subscribed, but not look into the group) and exclude unnecessary communities. You can specify not only communities, but also VK applications.

There are many below advanced settings such as education and work, devices, browsers, operating system. These are already narrow settings that are needed only for those who are associated with these indicators. For example, software developers for specific platforms or sellers of relevant products - iPhone 8 cases, screen protectors, etc.

Even lower, you can set up saving a retargeting audience of those who have already interacted with your ad, but completed the targeted action. Here you can also specify an event - for example, select only those who liked the post. You can remake the ad for this audience and “squeeze” it.

Advice: Look at the tips on the right - they change depending on the targeting settings. This way you can predict reach, impressions, clicks and calculate an approximate budget.

Step 4:

Ad display time

Here you can set the display on specific days and hours. This feature is useful after testing, when you clearly understand what time your audience is most active. There is a checkbox "Take into account holidays", it launches ads in holidays according to the Sunday schedule.

Advice: Make ads to show in different time. For example, for a quest room, a weekend announcement would begin with the text “Don’t know what to do with yourself this weekend?” , and on weekdays - “Don’t know how to brighten up gray everyday life?”

Step 5:

Pricing: clicks and impressions

Here we choose the payment model - for impressions or clicks, as well as a bid. We have already written above how these models differ from each other and what approximate budget should be expected.

Advice: VK has an auction system - the higher your bid, the more likely it is to win the auction and get more ad impressions. Keep in mind that the audience that performs conversion actions “costs” more.

Step 6:

Placement setup

Here you already choose where to be placed - in the mobile version, in the desktop version, or both. You can also check the box next to the item "Show in the advertising network", then the ads will additionally get into applications and advertising network VC.

The placement depends on the type of traffic you need. If you are promoting applications, it is more logical to be placed in the mobile version, and if the traffic source is not important, then choose all sites.

General targeting advice: while setting up targeting in VK, you can immediately see the number of people matching the specified parameters, approximate reach, the number of impressions and clicks, and the budget of the Republic of Kazakhstan. If the audience is too wide, then in the personal account on the right under the line "Active audience" the hint "Audience too wide" is displayed. This means narrowing down your targeting options. After that, the tooltip will change - a green checkmark will appear and the inscription "Now everything is in order."