Why you should exclude (some) audiences from ad campaigns

The goal of digital advertising seems straightforward: reach as many people as possible.

But it’s not actually that simple. Sure, blasting your ad campaign across social media may generate promising results in terms of the number of impressions your ad receives, and that can be great for brand awareness. But if those impressions don’t correlate with spikes in click-throughs, additional sales, foot traffic, or inquiries, then you could be wasting at least some of your ad spend on the wrong audience.

In other words, you won't get a good return on your advertising budget if you cast your net too wide. So, in addition to considering the audiences you want to specifically target with your campaign, it's equally important to consider the audience you want to exclude.

What is audience exclusion?

Any digital advertising platform will give you the opportunity to define the audience that should see your ad. Typically, you’ll select from characteristics you want to target such as gender, age, or geographic area.

Audience exclusion is the opposite: it’s your opportunity to identify the characteristics of people who shouldn't see your ad. In doing so, you are preventing your ad from being seen by people who are unlikely to buy from you, so you can focus your advertising dollars on the best possible prospects.

In some cases, reasons for excluding certain audiences are obvious. For example, if you only serve local customers, you can exclude people living in zip codes outside your region.

In other cases, identifying exclusion characteristics is not so evident. To arrive at them, you'll want to think about the essential characteristics of your target customer and also what kind of person would make an unlikely customer. If you sell landscaping services, for example, you will probably want to exclude people who rent.

Why audience exclusion matters for digital advertising

Many digital advertising platforms charge based on the reach of your campaign, the number of impressions, or the number of clicks you receive. If you don't optimize your audience, you’ll waste advertising dollars targeting the wrong audience.

That’s why you’ll want to develop a precise audience-targeting strategy that makes sense based on your desired customers and campaign objectives. Then, as you start to see results from your advertising spend, you can experiment with targeting more broadly to see if you get any additional traction.

Getting started with audience exclusions in Nextdoor Ads Manager

Luckily, Nextdoor is purpose-built for hyper-targeted, personalized advertising. Nextdoor users often log in with high intent to find recommendations for products and services. And 88% of them support a local business at least once a week.

It's always best to start with broader targeting and narrow down to further optimize your campaigns. You can use manual targeting and build custom audiences, giving you more control over audience exclusions and, likely, even better results from your campaign.

Exclude by audience segments

Within manual targeting, you can customize your audience by demographics, interests, or devices. You can also target homeownership, which is based on the percentage of homeowners within a particular geographical area.

Audience segments allow you to narrowly focus your criteria on your target customers.

Exclude by custom audience

You can also build custom audiences. With custom audiences, you can upload a list of data to exclude from your audience. If you have a list of zip codes to exclude, for example, you can upload them rather than manually selecting each zip code to exclude.

You can also upload lists of your current customers by email or mailing addresses. That way, you're not spending your ad dollars on reaching neighbors already using your product or service.

If you're launching an awareness campaign and want to target people who've never heard of your company, you may also want to exclude other email addresses you've collected, such as newsletter subscribers.

As you make your exclusions, you will see your forecasted audience size change.

Understanding your target customers

Many small and mid-sized businesses don't have much data about their ideal customers. Either the business is new, or it doesn't have a good way of collecting data.

You may have a gut instinct for who you want to target and who you want to exclude, and you can start there. Think about your best customers, the characteristics they have in common, and the characteristics they don't have. Over time, you can begin collecting data to back up your instincts.

If you strategically exclude irrelevant or uninterested audiences, you can maximize your campaigns and marketing budget. Pay attention to your digital advertising results and adjust your criteria over time until you've found the sweet spot that effectively targets the right audience.

To try your hand at audience exclusions, create a Nextdoor ad today.