How to pump up segmentation in context

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Content
Basic segmentation
The Five Questions (5W) Method
RFM segmentation
Audience segmentation in contextual advertising is often underestimated, dividing users only by socio-demographic parameters. Meanwhile, deeper segmentation serves as an excellent tool for increasing the effectiveness of advertising - it can improve ad conversion and even reduce the overall CPA. We talked to experts and found out how, when and why you need to segment your audience in contextual advertising settings and what results this can give.



Basic segmentation
According to context specialists at the digital telegram database search agency R:TA, basic segmentation is now used by almost all advertisers. The audience to which advertising is directed is divided into blocks, each of which has its own conversion rate. Blocks are not mixed within one advertising campaign; creatives are prepared for each.

Having talked to different agencies, we found out that different companies have their own basic segmentation. For example, in the performance marketing agency E-Promo, users are segmented based on the following criteria:

Geo. Moscow and St. Petersburg are usually singled out for separate advertising campaigns as the most developed regions with high demand, as well as, for example, regions where production is physically located and the brand is better known. Such segmentation helps to evaluate the effectiveness of returns in different regions.

Sociodemographic characteristics. Used to adjust bids to show ads more often to a more converting audience.


Natalia Afoshkina, contextual advertising specialist at the performance marketing agency E-Promo

I advise not to rely on the client's general idea of ​​the target audience ("m-f 25-45 years old"), but to make adjustments based on real statistics. For example, clients often ask to exclude impressions to users under 18 years old, but in practice this audience can bring conversions at the level of other age categories. Presumably, this is due to the fact that systems do not always correctly determine the age of users, especially if several people use one device.

Interests and behavior. This type of segmentation is used in networks that have appropriate targeting. That is, psychographic segmentation deals with the user's occupation, hobbies, lifestyle, values, etc. Nowadays, such information is quite easy to obtain thanks to social networks and open profiles. Behavioral segmentation is based on the actual or potential behavior of users: how long does it take a client to make a purchase decision, study similar products, how does he interact with the site, etc.

Natalia Afoshkina, contextual advertising specialist at the performance marketing agency E-Promo

Another approach used in our agency is segmentation by audience “warmth”:

users in the selection process (categorical and informational queries);
adherents of competing brands (competitive demand);
the company's customers or users familiar with the brand (brand demand).
We allocate these types of queries into different advertising campaigns and set different KPIs for them, without expecting the same low CPA from competitive queries as from branded ones.

Digital agency R:TA divides the potential audience of an advertising campaign at the stage of collecting the semantic core.

РРС experts of digital agency R:TA

The entire audience is divided into segments according to requests:

Branded queries are an audience of users who know about the company.
General product - target users looking for a product or service.
Transactional - a “warm” audience interested in purchasing.
Near-thematic - informational requests or requests indirectly related to the product being sold.
Competitor queries - the audience of your direct competitors.
In addition to the main methods of segmentation by geography, socio-demographic and psychographic characteristics, Carrot quest also practices segmentation of users by source.


Olga Kaptieva, editor-in-chief of Carrot Blog (blog of Carrot quest company)

This segmentation involves dividing users into groups based on the source of their transition - from a blog, from posts on social networks, from contextual advertising, email newsletters, etc. You can interact with them in different ways - for example, there is no point in showing customers who came from an email newsletter a pop-up asking them to subscribe, etc.

For example, when advertising the online store of underwater hunting equipment Vlastah.ru, visitors who came from the store's VKontakte group were shown a special pop-up. It turned out that users from VKontakte are more loyal. The banner conversion was 8%, which was 4.5% higher than the pop-up conversion for other visitors.


The Five Questions (5W) Method
Much less frequently, the so-called 5W method, or the five questions method, is used for market segmentation. Each question is a parameter according to which the audience is divided into segments.

Why? - based on the motivation for purchase and consumption.
What? - by product type
Who? - by consumer type.
When? - when circumstances of need arise.
Where? — by the place where the benefit is obtained (including distribution channels).
According to the first two features, segmentation is possible even at the keyword level.

Experts from the digital agency R:TA cite a case from their recent practice, when they used segmentation by consumer type.