It is like ‘Déjà vu’, isn’t it? You go to online sites selling wedding rings because you want to give your fiancée a gift she’ll remember for the rest of her life. Well, the results of your search seem to stalk you like a bad nightmare. You can find dozens of ads for unique wedding rings on every site you visit. While you may view it as being stalked with creepy ads, businesses view this as necessary targeted advertising. However, they are catching on. They are using tactics to not seem like a desperate online stalker and utilize personalized ads. After all, they know that this is an adequate way to lose tons of customers and prospects immediately!
Why Do Businesses Even Use Targeted Advertising, Anyway?
You probably have wondered what on Earth motivates companies to use personalized advertising when promoting their products and/or services to you. Well, the answer is “because they think that personalized ads are a great way to reach out to those in their target markets and drive droves of traffic to their sites”. After all, they know that sales are a numbers game. More web traffic eventually results in many more conversions.
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Businesses Want To Be Your Best Friend!
Ok, so while it may seem strange that businesses would think that bombarding you with a lot of targeted advertising would be a great way to strike up a friendship with you, it’s true. Many businesses want to develop a good rapport with you. They believe that this is an appropriate way to get business from you. That’s why they resort to advertising on many channels and platforms. A fine example of this is in creepy YouTube ads.
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Businesses believe that targeted advertising is the best way to talk to you
Asides from wanting to strike up a sense of camaraderie with you, businesses also want to ‘talk to you’ as though you were a real person (which you are!) They rely on thousands of marketing studies. They formulate the targeted advertising campaigns that tell them that this is the case! These studies show that consumers respond well to personalized ads. However, recently many of these businesses have begun to realize that many of their customers and prospects interpret this as being creepy ads.
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They think that personalized advertising is the best way to get good quality leads
Let’s face it! The ads for wedding rings may have been personalized ads. They might have tried to get you to believe that the company that produced the personalized advertisement cared about you. However, all businesses that create targeted advertising are really after only one thing – your money. After all, this is the only that they can stay in business!
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They want loyalty from you
For these businesses, repeat business from you gets interpreted as customer loyalty. Their numerous marketing studies have indicated to them that targeted advertisement is one unique way to do this. That’s part of the reason why all of those companies seemed to bombard you with personalized ads about wedding rings. You may have felt that some of these companies got creative with this by sending you what you thought were creepy YouTube ads.
Businesses Are Getting Wiser
At the end of the day, there is only one thing that businesses want from you. They want your money and mostly in the form of repeat purchases. This money hunting is the only reason why they send you all of that personalized advertising about wedding rings. However, many businesses are realizing (finally) that many customers perceive these as creepy ads (as you did), and are avoiding them like the plague. They are responding by toning the frequency and intense nature of their personalized ads down somewhat.
- Businesses are being selective about the type of data that they gather about you. Businesses have to (by law) be careful regarding the data type that they collect about (and from) you through personalized ads. They know that some personalized advertisements can get perceived by many as being excessively intrusive creepy ads. They are doing this by being open and upfront about the types of information that they gather about you. Businesses are also keeping clear that this information will be in strict confidentiality, and is only to get used for personal advertisement purposes.
They’re telling you what the targeted advertisements are going to offer you. For example, you may have found some of the personalized ads you were ‘bombarded with’ to be creepy ads because they asked you for your income level in a range. But you found that most of these personalized ads indicated to you that this information was only going to be used to select the most appropriate type of wedding rings for you.
Tricks of the Trade – They Are Being Smart About Their Buyer Personas
You may have no idea what a buyer persona is. This is a profile of all of the information about people, like you, in the form of a ‘person’ who is non-existent. Do you know that these businesses are realizing that a growing number of people (like you) are perceiving personalized advertisements as being creepy? So they are gathering information about you from their buyer personas instead of personalized ads when they are sending you targeted advertisements.
Nice freebies offered by Businesses – the clickbait
Businesses know that you view personalized ads as being creepy ads. They’re trying to butter you up to be more receptive towards this type of personalized advertising by offering you nice freebies. This personalization doesn’t necessarily have to be in the form of new product offers. It can be in the form of lucrative discounts (usually 10-15%) off of your first purchase. It can also be in the form of exclusive deals and/or promo codes.
Businesses Solely Want Your Business – Exemplify the Gains
No digital marketing team is really out to either stalk or get you with creepy ads. All they are trying to do with targeted advertising is trying to get your business. However, these businesses realize that customers and prospects (like you) can easily misinterpret their actual intentions. They also understand that this can lead you (and people like you) to avoid doing business with them at all costs. Furthermore, they perceive that this can affect them negatively in the long term in the form of lost business and declining sales. This loss will occur if you give enough people you know negative feedback about them; no business wants this. This loss of business is the reason why they’re getting wiser about personalized ads to make them seem much less creepy.
