This is the first post in a multi-part series on low-cost, high-return methods of hyper-local advertising.
Call it targeted advertising. Call it audience demographics. I call it hyper-local. One of the nice side-effects of this rush to create (and join) a myriad of social networks is all the user meta information that is being collected. The very premise behind most social (and even professional) online networks is connecting you with others like you. This, inherently, requires the user give up some key information about themselves. Seemingly innocent bits of descriptive data that marketers big and small drool over such as where you live, what college you went to, what professional industry you’re in, or even what kinds of things do you look for online. Increasingly, these bits of info are being used to sell hyper-local advertising opportunities to… anyone.
Sure, demographics-based marketing has been around forever. The key trend happening today is the combination of companies amassing this data in large quantities and then turning around and selling targeted advertising opportunities a la carte. Let my first example show you what I’m talking about.
Example 1: Facebook
With 39 million active users, Facebook has the potential to provide a wide range of options when it comes to advertising. If you visit their advertising section take a look at “Flyers.” Flyers are small ads that appear on the side of the page for users of Facebook. Facebook refers to them as self-serve advertising because you can put together a highly targeted ad in relatively short order. You can isolate your campaign by network (such as a specific city or university), and also by demographic data such as gender, age, undergraduate, graduate, etc.
What makes this advertising method so useful is the price point and the low barrier of entry. In a matter of minutes, I can put together a highly targeted ad and pay as little as $5.00 to distribute my electronic flyer to 2,500 Facebook users. Or, you can go much bigger and pay $200 for 100,000 flyer impressions per day. Facebook now offers a pay-per-click model that lets you set a daily budget and a top amount you’re willing to pay per click.
Example 2: StumbleUpon
Even at 1/10th the size of Facebook, StumbleUpon has a similar targeting scheme that allows you to really zoom in on the types of users that you want to advertise to. Their advertisers page gives you access to all the categories of pages that their users “stumble” through. They also tell you how many thousands of users are active in each category, which is helpful in trying to decide where to focus your campaign. Once you select a category, you can then further drill down and select users by country, state, and even a limited list of major cities. You can go one step further by specifying a gender.
You simply fund your account with as little as $5 and you can begin your campaign. StumbleUpon will automatically insert your specified URL into their user’s stumbles in the category you selected. An additional feature of StumbleUpon is access to how users have rated your site (thumbs up or thumbs down). This is great for a couple reasons. First, it allows you to better judge how effective your landing page is. Also, if your site gets enough thumb’s up, it can potentially make it into heavy rotation in the normal StumbleUpon system (for free).
Next time, we’ll look at a couple other hyper-local advertising methods and review some tips on maximizing the effectiveness of your campaign.
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