As theory says, personalized ads are powerful tools that increase relevance for users and enable advertisers to reach internet users based on their interests. Unlike regular ads that are just thrown out for anyone to see, personalized ads to target specific audiences and increase the chances of successful marketing.

Social media sites these days know more about their users than they should. This enables them to make virtual profiles on their users and show them only specific ads with a higher chance of hitting close to home than non-personalized ads.

Keeping records of users’ online activity makes it fairly easy to establish a profile about their likes and dislikes. Facebook is the top tool for marketers to use personalized ads. Social sites like Facebook, Instagram, etc. have immense data on their users. They can sell this data to marketing firms, or can pay these social sites to send personalized ads to users.

For example, a pizza shop owner wants to reach more people and increase sales. They can use Facebook or Google personalized ads. These companies will look for people in the vicinity of that pizza shop who have liked other eateries and checked in to other fast-food restaurants. Unlike targeting everyone in that area, they only target the so-called foodies, and the chances of acceptance are greater this way.

Here are 5 useful tips to follow for marketing firms trying to enhance their reach by using personalized ads.

1. Gather as Much Data as Possible

The whole method of personalized ads revolves around data on the people these ads are going to target. Brands should collect as much data as possible to make buyer profiles for personalized ads. 

Brands can send questionnaires to their customers to collect data about the attributes they want to know. Asking questions about them over some time is recommended, but by doing this carefully, a company will not appear to be prying on its users. Brands should also ensure their users that their data will only be used to optimize their experience and will not be sold to other firms.

Furthermore, there is data that users share freely on social media like Facebook, and that can help brands understand their customers. Marketers should start their personalization endeavors on sites like Facebook and Instagram.

2. Make Customer Profiles

Once brands or marketers have enough data they can start making virtual profiles on their customers based on several factors such as age, gender, location, income, and shopping frequency, etc. 

These profiles can then be placed among different categories, and brands can produce a library of content to meet the group’s needs. 

Digital marketing consultant Leslie Handmaker said that the marketers are now clear on personas to start to refine the custom messages that will be shown to both new and existing customers. She also advised that this message should be catered to the defined personas by addressing the persona’s needs and assisting them to enter the next stage of the funnel.

3. Create Personalized Content

Firms can then start reaching out to customers based on their virtual profiles. Email is an easy way of doing this. Relevant emails can potentially drive about 18 times more revenue as compared to broadcasted emails. 

Victor Ramirez, owner of a digital marketing agency, said that eCommerce emails can often get really personal and that MailChimp now has tools for websites like WordPress and Shopify. With these tools, emails can be sent based on what your target audience likes. He also advised checking if visitors abandoned the cart on a spatula? If so, send an email with four different model spatulas with a similar price – and not just send product emails of other stock items.

4. Personalize the Full Process

Prabhjot Singh, president of growth intelligence platform Pyze, talked about the personalization process as one that includes entailing or morphing the web and mobile applications based on the behavior of their users. He enforced the idea that it is a step beyond simply personalizing content, like in emails.

Mobile or web-based applications can take huge amounts of data and generate leads and target specific audiences correctly. For this personalization experience to occur two things are required. First is a good software that aids in the personalization effort, and the second is quality data being collected from the users.

Brands need to put in a lot of effort into the personalization method, so figuring out the lifetime value of a customer is always appreciated. This way brands can establish how much effort to put into the personalization experience of a specific category of customers and not over-commit. 

How Users Can Control the Ads They See

If you use Google and want to see only personalized ads, do the following steps:

• Go to your Google account.

• Click on Data and Personalization on the left navigation panel.

• On the Ad personalization panel, click Go to ad settings.

• Click Turn On Ads personalization, and if you want to turn these ads off, then click Turn Off Ads personalization.

• Update your personal preferences under the tab How your ads are personalized to get personalized ads.