How To Advertise On Quora: A Guide For Newbies

Almost every company which is going to promote its products and services thought about Quora at least once. Since its foundation in 2009 this trading platform has become a large internet community with more than 200 million unique visitors (according to Quora Founder & CEO Adam D'Angelo) and more than 500 million of all visitors a month (according to Serpstat). Sounds pretty good, doesn't it?

But Quora is a Q&A platform so that it won't be handy for every business. The user's account reputation and the value of information plays an important role here. The key point of advertising is how useful and unobtrusive your ad is.

Quora ads tool was released not so long ago and that's why it's quite simple, there are no complex settings and features. This means that you'll have to do everything manually, so forget about API and mass exporting through editor and spreadsheets.

Ad account looks like this:

Quora ad tool has the same hierarchy as the other popular platforms (Bing, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc.)

There are four levels of Quora ads structure:

• Account: You need a Quora profile account to get access to the Quora Ads Manager and start running ads.
• Campaign: A campaign contains one or more ad sets and ads.
• Ad set: Ad sets contain one or more ads.
• Ad: The last level of ad creation process.

Nothing new, just a simple tree structure.

Quora Pixel is a piece of code you should install on your website. Using this tool you can collect remarketing lists and track conversions (to use this information in marketing campaigns).

There are two ways to install Pixel, go to your ad account to see how to do it. There you'll also find a guide on how to set conversion tracking via Quora Pixel.

We won't dwell on how to install Quora Pixel as you can find all necessary information in your ad account.

The first question on the minds of advertisers is "How to group campaigns?". Here you should know the available settings on each ad level. Here are some essential tips:

• On ad campaign level you can set ad campaign type (Conversion, App Installs or Traffic) and budget. So campaigns would be grouped by types.

• I also advise clustering campaigns based on the targeted countries. It will help in ad account navigation and budget allocation according to regions. Campaigns will look like this:

- USA / Conversion / Complete Registration
- UK / Traffic
- CA / App Installs

• On the ad group level you should include geotargeting and interests/topics/questions/lists targeting. Don't forget that rates in big cities will be higher than in small ones, so I suggest you to group them separately. Here's how my ad groups looks like:

- New York / Interests / Marketing;
- California / Topics / Marketing;
- Chicago / Questions / SEO.

I also recommend adding remarketing into separate campaigns (of course, clustering them based on the countries and cities). Remarketing audience is always more loyal and and will react to your ads differently.

There are 3 types of ad campaigns:

Don't forget to separate big cities into extra groups as rates there are higher. Also make groups for topics, interests or questions. It will help you to write genuinely relevant ad texts. On the ad group level the following targeting ways are available:

• Geotargeting. You can target ads to cities as well as countries. The first method is more relevant as it helps to control costs and ad effectiveness. You can put several countries/cities in one group. As I said earlier, you can set geotargeting and specific audience targeting on ad group level. You should take this as the basis of your group.
  
  
• Audience targeting. You can target ads according to the topics, users interests, discussions, and remarketing lists. We will dwell on each of these targeting types a bit later.

There are only two types of ads available in Quora Ads: Image and Text. If you want to show both types, you may create an Image because it can be displayed in text format for result optimization. You will save time while creating it.

It is worth noting that Quora has strict editorial guidelines. You are likely to edit your ads many times until they will pass the moderation.

Basic mistakes are:

• Both the heading and text must end in "." or "?"

• Incorrect/unusual use of capitalization (including abbreviations);

• Formatting or punctuation errors (no text in bold or italics);

• Grammar errors;

• And of course, your text must comply with things you offer.

In this section we will look at each audience targeting types and how to work with them.

Quora uses a machine learning algorithm to classify the topics of the questions by the previous users' question& answer history. You can choose specific topics in ad groups settings, and your ad will be shown in all discussions of the selected topics.

How to choose targeting topics correctly? There are several ways:

• You can pick your essential issue, type it into the selection field and Quora will suggest you the variants of related topics:

This targeting type is similar to the previous one, but it is based on user interest, not the topic of the question. Quora analyzes discussions that user looks through and puts it into specific categories of interest so that you can set up the targeting.

The disadvantage of this method is a weak control of discussions where your ads will be shown. The platform will be following the appropriate user and as a result could show your ad in non-related topics.

To solve this problem, you need to exclude some topics or questions on the level of ad group setting. You can use methods described in the previous section to choose targeting interests.

I consider this targeting type to be the most objective and productive. It allows you to choose specific questions where your ad will be shown.

You have two ways to pick proper questions:

• Use Google Analytics data. This method will be handy for those advertisers who already use Quora for the organic promotion. You can select the answers that bring you traffic, and insert ads in the most effective ones.

So you could show your answer in the first positions of your top-performing questions.

• Use Quora top pages. Let's look at this method in details:

a) Identify your target keywords. You can use the method mentioned above: type your domain into Serpstat's search box and get the list of keywords you rank for in Google search.

b) I also advise you to identify your main competitors so that you сan target the questions where your competitors are discussed. Go to Competitors tool in the SEO Research tab and get the list of your competitors.

c) Then type in quora.com domain and go to Positions tool. Now we need to filter results, pick "Keywords – Includes" and type the keyword that describes your niche, as well as you can enter the name of your competitor. As a result, we will get the list of relevant questions that rank high and get organiс traffic.

d) Export the results and set ad campaign on these pages. Repeat the last step for more keywords/competitors.

You can add related questions to the same ad group, and Quora will create separate groups for each of them.

If you successfully implement Quora Pixel to your site, you will be able to create remarketing lists. There are 3 list types available in ad tool:

1. Website Traffic. These are the users who have already visited your site. You can see who attended the whole site or particular pages.
2. Lookalike. These are users similar to yours. This list is created according to your remarketing lists of site users.
3. List Match. These are lists formed according to your clients' contacts. Currently, Quora recognizes only emails.

If you use remarketing lists targeting I advise you to exclude some topics, interests or questions on the level of ad groups settings. This process will help you avoid being shown at the non-relevant discussions.

Will Quora Ads bring instant results? Probably not. It has its own peculiarities. You deal with people who are not looking for anything now, and Quora itself is not aimed at selling goods or services. So you are to find the right questions to place your ad in.

And if you'll succeed in Quora advertising it will help you not only bring new clients but also improve brand recognition and enhance its loyalty.

Below I gathered several useful tips based on my experience:

I hope this post was useful for you. Ask questions if you have any!