Targeted advertising. Is it possible to do without it?

The answer to this question lies in dispelling the main myth about traffic in social networks. This myth goes as follows: there’s no need to pay the platform for advertising; potential leads can be gathered organically.

And like any misconception, it carries a grain of truth. With successful targeting of the audience and the creation of content that is interesting specifically to that target audience, organic growth is possible. Social networks, particularly VK, respond favorably to content that is interesting to users and show it more often.

However, there is one significant “but.” Suppose you have created an account from scratch or revived an old group that has been abandoned for a month, six months, a year, or more. In either case, the work begins from a clean slate. But to gain organic traffic, you need to start with a certain number of views on your posts, as we mentioned earlier.

Hashtags could solve the problem, but according to official statistics from the social network, over 80% of VK users do not use hashtags for searching. Furthermore, posts that have hashtags that group followers do not click on are shown even less often by the algorithms.

So, is it a vicious circle, you might say? Not at all, if you incorporate targeted advertising into your development plan.

It’s worth noting that VK’s algorithms allow the use of targeting for various stages of your business and the group in particular. Thus, launching targeted ads when the group has between 0 to 5 followers helps generate initial traffic and adjust the hypothesis about the target audience. At this sales stage, it’s not about making sales but about establishing a foundation for brand recognition.

Next begins the process of forming stable traffic and a core of loyal target audience. For this purpose, the best traffic settings (in terms of click cost, conversion to followers, and other metrics) are used for long-term launches to gather the first 100-300-500 people.

First sales can start with 100 people or with 300; the key is to connect analytics and monitor the effectiveness not only of advertising but also of managing the group itself—is there enough information about the product? Does this information address potential questions and objections from the target audience? How do subscribers react to posts in the group, and what is the CTR—the conversion percentage of a subscriber’s reaction?

If followers in the group do not engage with posts or give less than a 1-2% CTR, either the audience settings in the ads need to be changed, or the essence of the posts—the content that does not reflect your target audience’s values—needs to be modified.

In other words, targeted advertising must be organically integrated into the product’s business model.

And once your group starts making sales, the algorithms consider your posts interesting and grant organic reach. Is this a reason to turn off targeted advertising? Yes, if it’s for a short time. Because your audience, no matter how loyal, tends to tire of your product. Therefore, finding ways to “refresh” your target audience and using new targeting settings is inevitable.

Thus, targeted advertising can help you find your target audience at any stage of your business development, whether you’re starting from scratch on VK or growing an already functioning group. Contact us to make your sales in the most popular social network even more effective.