Building a Brand and Marketing through Targeted Ads
It’s not easy to build a brand from scratch. In the pre-internet era, marketing was reserved for large marketing agencies that placed advertisements on billboards, television, and radio. However, since the advent of the internet, the possibilities of marketing and building a brand have increased dramatically. Social media has helped to target the groups and social spheres that the advertisements reach.
If the entire internet is looked at as a big network, advertising to the entire network is expensive, time-consuming, and inefficient. However, if somehow there was a way to divide that network into groups and sub-sections that give advertisers the ability to share their vision only with people who have already demonstrated that they are interested in their type of product/ service, then marketing becomes more cost effective and efficient.
An example of this is a small clothing brand called Rivercrest Clothing. As a new start-up that has been around since 2016, their main source of advertising is Instagram. When a business like Rivercrest decides to advertise on Instagram that choose a picture to share and then they have the option to go through and select a number of settings that target specific audiences. Age, location, and interests are the main criteria that the advertiser chooses from. So for a company like Rivercrest, a preppy, outdoor, adventure-wear clothing brand, the northeast is the best place to advertise. On top of that, the optimal age is between 16 and 25, the optimal shared interests are preppy, outdoor recreation, and they also followed pages such as Vineyard Vines, and J Crew. Being able to create an audience such as this allows the ad from their company to appear on the feed of consumers who could be more easily persuaded to buy to product, and end up clicking on the ad.
Sources:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/sujanpatel/2016/11/12/9-ways-to-use-social-media-to-build-your-personal-brand/#67d304ba3520
https://www.rivercrestclothing.com/