October 8, 2021
The Ideal QA Process in Digital Advertising
In the ever-changing social advertising space, a few new platforms have arisen. One of those platforms to come through the ranks is Quora. Quora is a social website where people can ask questions about everything from career advice to cooking advice. All the questions are both created by users and answered by users.
Targeting
There are a few different targeting options within Quora ads that differ from your normal social channel, as well as a few mainstays in the social space. The first targeting option is, of course, Question Targeting. Question targeting allows you to select the exact questions where you want your ads to show. This is great for marketing your company exactly on the question where someone is asking about your company, product, or service. This is typically a low scale option since it is highly targeted.
Next, we have interest and topics targeting options. Topic targeting allows you to advertise on the topics that are relevant to your target user or your company. For example, if you work for a mattress brand, you can cover all mattress-related topics, so if someone is looking through mattress-related questions, your ad comes up. The difference between topic and interest targeting is that interest targeting shows your ad to people who have said what they are interested in when they sign up. Both options here allow for greater scale dependent on how popular a topic or interest may be on Quora.
Lookalikes are another Quora ad targeting option, similar to other social platforms. Upload an email list, and Quora finds users that look similar to your original seed, generating a new lookalike audience. Just like Facebook ads, Quora has a percentage scale for how close someone is to your seed audience with 1% being the closest in relation and 10% being the furthest away from the original seed.
Last but not least are retargeting ads. Quora, like other social platforms, has a pixel that can be used to track visitors on the site. Using that pixel, you can build a retargeting audience to make sure you get back in front of people who have visited your site and have not yet converted.
Ad Types
Currently, Quora offers two different ad types: text ads and image ads. The text ad type allows you to include your business name, a headline sentence, body text, and a call to action. Choose your CTA from the dropdown menu, and then Quora dynamically appends your website to complete the CTA. Note that, unlike other social platforms, Quora really lays down the law when it comes to proper grammar and punctuation. Also, the headline must be a full sentence.
Quora image ads are very similar to text ads in terms of the text available and the CTA dropdown, but they allow you to also include an image. The aspect ratio for the image is the same as for Facebook link click ads (1200×628). Quora does not have limits on the amount of text on an image. Image ads are adaptable to different placements. If you opt an image ad into the text ads placements, Quora will dynamically remove the image in order for it to fit the text ad placement.
Content
Unless you are retargeting on Quora, you are going to want to take a high-level asset approach vs. trying to get someone to commit to a demo immediately. The content that typically performs well on Quora are ebooks, templates and free webinars—anything that your target customer would be interested in but is not too high of a barrier to entry. We have seen our conversion rates for high level content be 10x our conversion rates for demos or lower funnel goals.
Bid Types
Currently, Quora ads have two bid options: CPC bid and TCPA (Target CPA) [JW1] bid. The CPC bid is optimized to drive the most clicks possible within a budget and will optimize toward people who are likely to click. You bid based on the maximum CPC you are willing to pay. The TCPA bid is optimized to drive conversions. By placing the Quora pixel on your site, it feeds information to the campaigns to adjust delivery to people who are likely to complete the conversion event. Set the bid at a TCPA for what you are willing to pay for a conversion.
When Should You Get Started on Quora?
In most scenarios, B2C advertisers should be spending substantially on Facebook/Instagram and B2B advertisers substantially on LinkedIn before expanding onto Quora. The exception would be if there are high volume threads on Quora that help you target your audience in a unique way that’s not available elsewhere.
With many platforms like Quora emerging in the paid social arena, it is an exciting time to be in this space. Stay tuned for my next blog post in this Quora-specific series.
