Quora has come a long way with their targeting options within the few short years the platform as been out. Advertisers now have six, main targeting options to use for our PPC campaigns within the channel.

Targeting is selected at the ad set level within the platform. So hopefully this post gives you an idea of the options you have to better help you plan out your next campaign build in Quora. Let’s begin.

Question Targeting

This one is fairly straight forward. Quora is mainly a question and answer site. So it only makes sense advertisers have the ability to target by specific questions. What you may not know is that question targeting works in two different ways. You can target users who are actively reading a question. Or you can target users who read a question at some point in the past 30 days.

The Question Date Range option you see above only applies to users who previously read a certain question. While 30 days is the maximum limit, you can select any day increment under 30 days. Consider creating two different ad sets for this type of targeting because you may find the user intent is different between the two options.

Topic Targeting

Questions in Quora are grouped into Topics. If you don’t see enough volume with the questions targeting option, you may want to look at choosing topics. This way you can still be relevant to a certain category, but also focus on expanding your reach a little bit. Here’s an example of topics I may want to target if I want to try and reach anyone who teaches music.

I searched for “music teacher” topics. Added a few I thought were relevant. Then Quora started to recommend other topics that may fit.

If you’re not sure on any of the suggested topics (or any topics), just visit the topic page yourself. You’ll get an understanding of how many people follow the topic as well as what questions are typically associated with your chosen topics.

Interest Targeting

Interest targeting is similar to topic targeting, but there is one major difference.

Topic targeting gets in front of users when they are actually on a topic page or question. Interest targeting connects with users who have shown historical engagement in the past such as read a question, upvoted a certain question in a topic, etc. These users may not as “buy ready” as topic targeting, but they still could be a relevant audience based on their previous engagements. You can add topics or research topics to use as interest targets exactly how we did it in the topic targeting example above.

Audience Targeting

Advertisers can now create three different audiences in the Quora platform.

1. We can remarket to users who have visited your website or certain page or the website.
2. We can take email lists we’ve legally collected and upload them to the system and see how many of your current users are on Quora.
3. Then just like Google and Facebook, we can create lookalike audiences based on previously created audiences we made in Quora.

Before you consider lookalikes, your base audience must have at least 3,000 users before a lookalike can be created.

The options with audience targeting can be a lot depending on what resources you have. Segment out your email lists as much as you can (depending on volume) to better speak to your users. Create a variety of audiences from site visits in different cookie pool durations to speak to users differently in the funnel. And of course, we have lookalike audiences to focus on expanding reach when we’re not seeing growth from current targeting options.

Keyword Targeting

This option is brand new! Just announced in late January, keyword targeting allows your ad to appear on questions that contain the specific keywords you are targeting. Right now there are only broad and phrase match types advertisers can use. Unlike the main search engines, phrase match actually sticks to actual word order to make your targeting more specific than some other channels.

And in case you didn’t notice in the image above, there are keyword exclusions. Think of these as negative keywords. You can block out certain words or phrases you feel would not be relevant to your audience or campaign goals to better hone in on what would probably work the best.

Broad Targeting

Oh yes, even Quora has a machine learning option.

Broad targeting is perfect for those who feel they have maximized all other targeting opportunities or are looking to greatly expand their reach. With broad targeting, you need to be more patient. It takes a little time for Quora to understand how users are engaging with your ads. Plus the system will then try and find more users who perform similar behaviors. Quora recommends pairing broad targeting with conversion optimized campaigns to better help Quora match your ads to users who are more likely to convert.

Conclusion

Quora has a lot of unique ways you can reach your users. Before you launch a campaign, do your research and figure out which targeting options are the best for your campaign objectives. Some targeting options are straight forward while others require some additional digging. You might be surprised by which options work best for you.

If you aren’t sure how to put Quora to work for you, check these posts and podcasts:

•  How to Use Quora Ads for Big Results in Every Step of the Funnel
•  3 Easy Steps to Find Your Audience on Quora Ads
• Everything You Need to Know About Quora Ads

Which of these targeting options are your favorite? We’d love to hear all of your tips, tricks and favorites in the comments below!