The one lady in Peoria who made me rethink my whole ad targeting approach

I was at a gas station outside Peoria last month, just grabbing a soda, and this older lady starts chatting me up about how she keeps getting ads for vacation homes in Florida. She told me she's never even been on a plane, and she has no clue why Facebook thinks she wants to buy a beach house. It hit me right there that I've been sitting behind a screen assuming I know people based on data points, but I never actually talk to anyone outside my own bubble. That conversation made me realize I probably miss the mark on half my ad audiences because I don't ground them in real human stories. I went back and looked at one of my campaigns for a local plumbing service, and sure enough, I was targeting folks based on income levels instead of actual household needs. Has anyone else had a random run-in that totally shifted how you set up your buyer personas?

3 comments

3 Comments

evan_burns951mo ago

Wait, you're telling me one random lady at a gas station taught you more about ad targeting than all your analytics dashboards combined? That's wild but honestly not surprising. Data points can't tell you someone's never flown on a plane or doesn't want a beach house. I bet half my old campaigns were just guessing at people based on zip codes and credit scores too. Pretty sure I'd have better luck asking my grandma what she thinks about my ads. At least she'd tell me straight up if something sucks.

allen.ivan1mo ago

Dude, I had almost the EXACT same thing happen with a retired postal worker at a diner last month. She told me my car ad was trash because nobody under 40 drives that model anymore, and she was spot on about everything. Makes you realize all those fancy algorithms are just guessing while real people already KNOW the truth.

daniel_walker1d ago

Yeah that's exactly what happened when I ran my lawn care ads by this old guy at the hardware store. He told me straight up nobody searches for "professional landscaping" they just type "mow my grass" and he was 100% right.