Contextual advertising provides many tools and tactics that work with a different level of efficiency in different niches. For example, promotion of home appliances works well in search results. Sale of apartments can be boosted with the help of banner advertising in popular media. Innovative heating systems are often promoted using banners on thematic sites.
Poorly chosen tactics will increase your digital advertising costs or make the campaign ineffective. We usually distinguish several characteristics of every niche, which should be taken into consideration when launching a contextual advertising campaign.
Know How Competitive Your Niche Is
First of all, it is worth to assess the competitiveness of your niche. If the product is advertised by many competitors and there are large players among them, this means that the niche is competitive. In such a situation, a bidding auction is “overheated”. As a result, the cost per click is overstated because the first positions are held by the market leaders.
If this is the case, try one of the two following options. The first one is to allocate a large budget and compete with larger players for advertising positions on popular search requests. Spoiler alert: this is hardly the most effective way. It requires a large investment and may be unprofitable in terms of return on investment. We recommend you calculate your sales margin first, taking into account your cost per click.
The second option is advertising for low-frequency queries. The competition there is not fierce and do not result in unreasonably high budgets. In addition, such queries are carefully formulated by users. This results in a higher conversion because users know exactly what they want. By gathering a large number of such requests, you can get a large influx of new customers.
Here is an example. A ‘powerbank’ is a high-frequency query. Its cost per click is 1.79 UAH with a conversion rate 0.5%. An ‘external battery for a phone’ is a low-frequency query, cost per click is 2.75 UAH and a conversion rate is 2%. As a result, the cost per client acquisition is around 3,500 UAH in the first case and just about 140 UAH in the second case.
Take Into Account the Demand for Your Product
The next step is to take into account the demand for your product. If it is being actively searched by users, it makes sense to simply show your ads on relevant queries.
In case your product is new and you need to tell your target audience why it is good for them, advertising in search will not help much because people do not search for your product. The solution will be contextual advertising: showing banners on the websites often visited by your target audience. Targeting can be both by subject of sites and by interest of the people. In order to make advertising on the Google Display Network more effective, you need to create high-quality banners and carefully select the websites for placement.
For example, let’s design a nice banner:
Then, select reliable placements:
The placements can be chosen manually or using scripts.
Also, when talking about a demand, remember about a remarketing option. It helps you increase sales if you show ads to people who have already visited your site. For instance, if you own a clothes store, you may attract visitors who abandoned the cart, may be interested in sales, bought something more than a month ago, etc.
The Promodo team has a significant experience in managing remarketing campaigns (check out these case studies).
Estimate the “Urgency” of the Goods You Offer
Urgent goods and services are something that people require right now, e.g. food delivery, taxi order, etc. When advertising such products, it is important to occupy the top positions in search results because the users are likely to save time and pick something from the top results without searching for other options.
One of the examples of such products is a phone voucher. To attract more people to your service, you need to be at the top.
On the contrary, when people have time to choose something, they usually study several proposals from the first search results page. Therefore, it does not make sense to pay for getting into the top-3 or even top-5. It is better to use the exact requests, where users describe in detail what they need. For instance, compare “buy an apartment” to “cost of a one-bedroom apartment in the center of Kiev new building”. Advertising on the Google Display Network will also be effective. You need to use targeting by interest and select relevant placements.
Here is an example from our experience, we managed a remarketing campaign for a store that sold exclusive watches. To reach the desired KPIs, it was fine to get into top-7 for high-frequency queries.
Be Aware of Limitations for Ads in Different Niches
There are specific niches that are more difficult to promote because of existing restrictions. You can face a complete ban on advertising in certain niches or the restriction of certain tools. For example, it is impossible to advertise medical services using remarketing.
Google AdWords does not allow advertising for the following niches:
- • Counterfeit goods,
- • Dangerous goods and services (pyrotechnics),
- • Assisting illegal and unscrupulous activities (hacking, fraud),
- • Inappropriate content (materials promoting violence, extremism, etc.)
Some subjects have restrictions on display:
- • Weapons,
- • Alcohol,
- • Healthcare and medicines,
- • Casino and gambling,
- • Political advertising,
- • Tobacco products,
- • Adult content,
- • Fireworks.
Advertising in the aforementioned niches does not work in 99% cases.
In accordance with the recommendations of Google AdWords, personal advertising of medical services is prohibited on the following topics:
- • Problems with health (treatment of diseases, chronic health conditions, sexual health, disability, cosmetic surgery);
- • The recruitment of volunteers to participate in clinical trials;
- • Prescribed drugs;
- • Sensitive topics that remind users of their problems and life difficulties (problems with overweight, appearance, abuse, trauma, etc.).
If the project falls into one of the topics mentioned above, you will not be able to use remarketing and advertising in Gmail, and also targeting ads by:
- • Demographic and geographic data,
- • Audiences created by interest,
- • Similar audiences;
- • Interested customers’ audience,
- • Audiences by interest.
Final Thoughts
Advertising in each niche is different. It is necessary to study the peculiarities of contextual advertising in advance and carefully consider the strategy. Contact our expert to get more insights on how to benefit from contextual advertising in your niche.
About the Authors
Promodo team
Marketing department
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