Yesterday, Facebook showed me the ad above for lingerie. In case you’re wondering, NO – I’m not a cross dresser who likes to dress up in baby dolls and teddies.
While it was a good laugh for my friends, this ad campaign is a typical example of a rookie mistake in online marketing: not taking advantage of targeting options in online advertising.
Online advertising is not like traditional advertising
If an advertiser could only choose a single traditional advertising channel to run their campaign, they would probably choose the channel that would reach the most people. If it was a choice between The Star, Malay Mail and The Sun, the advertiser would most likely choose The Star because it has the highest circulation and biggest reach.
But there’s a problem when doing that – not all of The Star’s readership will be interested in the advertiser’s ad.
Fortunately, that problem is abated / reduced with online advertising. On the web, advertisers can track web user’s interactions to a very detailed level. For example, they can choose to show ads based on location (by looking up your IP address), interest (based on which websites you visit) or behaviour (based on what ads or links you click).
In Facebook, you can take that even further. Facebook knows A LOT about you, so advertisers can target ads on your gender, your birthday, relationship status and even your friends.
So in the example above, Secretnite.com the lingerie store could easily show their ads only to women. This would reduce the cost of their ad campaign because they are reducing the reach (audience). This will also result in better advertising ROI because money is not wasted advertising to men who are not interested in buying lingerie.
Target Facebook ads by demographic
How to sell lingerie to men
“But some men may want to buy lingerie for their wives or girlfriends,” you say.
That’s exactly right, but there’s a better way to do it: Show men a different ad.
Because advertisers can easily target audiences on the web, it’s not all or nothing like in traditional advertising. Secretnite.com could show one ad for their female audience, and another version to their male audience. Better yet, they could show the ad only to men who are in a relationship.
The goal of the men-only ad is the same (to get the audience to buy the product) but you can make it more effective by changing the content of the ad. Here are some examples of lingerie ads targeted at men:
- Give her an anniversary present she won’t forget
- Show her how much she turns you on
- Buy lingerie discreetly through our online store
Think of it as advertising for women’s lingerie in FHM or Auto Driver. If the advertiser knows their audience are men, would they show them ads that were made for women? Of course not!
In summary, online advertising allows you to target your audience much better. By doing so, you can reduce your audience group to something very specific so you can make a very targeted offer or deliver a very relevant message. The benefit is that you will save money on your ad campaign, and get better results.
Finally, here’s a great article on How to Create Successful Facebook Ads
If you thought this article was useful, please share it with your friends. And if you have questions about online advertising, feel free to ask in the comments below, or contact my friends at Level5 Creative for a proposal.
P.S. I’m not singling out Secretnite.com to shame them, they were just an eye-grabbing example 
