When you think of online advertising, what’s the first thing that pops into your mind? Google? Facebook? YouTube?
If you limit yourself to those digital media giants, you could be missing out on a more targeted market that is reaching 300 million users every month.
What Is Quora? And Who Uses It?
Quora is a social question-and-answer website, founded in 2009. Over the years, Quora has earned a reputation for crowd-sourcing the best responses to questions based on a Q&A engine of curious and highly engaged users.
In June 2017, Quora launched its advertising services, and businesses are seeing significant ROI from advertising on Quora. Why? Quora users are 20% more likely to have authorized a business purchase. They’re 65% more likely to report a college degree. They’re also 37% more likely to be a manager. And they’re 54% more likely to report an annual household income of more than $100K.
Even more interesting? 63% of Quora users conduct research before major online purchases. In the United States, Quora users are highly educated and primarily live in West and East Coast metropolitan areas.* With demographics like that, Quora Ads might be the perfect way to connect with your target market.
Let’s dig deeper into why Quora makes sense for advertising, explore what advertising options are available, and delve into best practices for running ads on Quora.
Quora Ads
When you’re ready to launch your first Quora Ad campaign, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by how easy it is, which makes it an ideal platform for beginners. You only need two lines of text and a landing page to get started.
While it’s quick and simple to launch your ads on Quora, don’t underestimate the platform’s power. Being able to pinpoint users who are interested in specific topics and/or questions means that Quora Ads provide a level of niche targeting that most other ad platforms can’t deliver.
There are several objectives to choose from, including conversions, traffic, awareness, app installs, and lead generation. And you can target your ads based on users’ interests, behavior, location, what they’re reading, and more.
If, for some reason, you get stuck as you set up your first Quora advertising campaign, you can always get help by clicking the ‘Talk to an Expert’ button at the bottom of the Quora for Business page.
How much does it cost to advertise on Quora?
You can start advertising on Quora’s self-serve platform for just $5 a day, which makes it almost risk-free to experiment and discover what advertising tactics work best for your organization.
Quora Ads uses a live auction system. In the way auctions commonly work, buyers — in this case, advertisers — offer a bid for the items being auctioned (i.e., ad placements). Final costs vary depending on the competitive landscape and your targeting selections.
Major debit and credit cards are accepted, and you’re only charged when your spend meets specific billing thresholds. The first threshold is $25 USD, and the threshold rises with each successful charge to $50, $250, $500, and $750. You are charged either when you hit your current billing threshold, or on the first week of the month, whichever comes first.
Types of Quora Ads and Where They Appear
Choose from text ads, image ads, or promoted answers to launch your campaign. Quora ads can appear on a user’s personal feed, topic feeds, and question pages. You can also opt-in for placements in the Quora Digest e-newsletter. (To subscribe to the Digest, go to ‘Settings’ and then select ‘Email and Notifications’. There, adjust your ‘Digest’ settings to your preferences.)
There are 10 targeting types available on Quora Ads, giving you several options to match your targeting to your advertising goals. Businesses are encouraged to utilize two or more targeting methods for a balance of contextual, behavioral, and audience targeting.
The Quora Pixel is required if you intend to run Conversion campaigns, or if you want to attribute conversions to specific campaigns, ad sets, or ads. Quora’s pixel not only allows you to track multiple conversion events, but also allows you to utilize Website Traffic Targeting, Lookalike Audience Targeting, and Conversion Optimized bidding. To install the pixel, visit the “Pixel & Events” tab in your Ads Manager and click “Setup Pixel.” A prompt with instructions will appear. You have the option of installing the pixel directly to your website, or through Google Tag Manager.
Quora Ads Best Practices
The key to success in advertising on Quora is to focus on answering questions, rather than being overly salesy. People come to the site to get their questions answered. Giving them what they want is the best way to showcase how your business is a good fit for them. This also makes Quora an ideal place to establish brand leadership.
As with any advertising option, there’s no “one size fits all” strategy when using Quora Ads. What works for one business, may not work for yours. The best practice is to test each targeting type or retest them with different groups of topics, interests, or keywords.
Not sure where to start? See what other businesses have done by studying Quora’s Success Stories.
And be sure to review Quora’s Ads Success Checklist before going live with your first campaign. To facilitate your onboarding, they’ve compiled a checklist of key steps to guide your campaigns. While completing each step doesn’t necessarily equate to success on Quora Ads, checking off each action item will help ensure your campaigns are optimized for scalability, measurement, and long-term success.
Is Quora advertising worth it?
While the answer to that question will vary depending on your organization’s priorities, Quora’s team has found key differentiators between successful and unsuccessful ad campaigns. Those differentiators can be found on Quora’s blog.
Speaking with one of Quora’s Ad Experts is another great way to determine if advertising on Quora is right for you. Their experts work on understanding your brand’s funnel, potential limitations, and even your team’s structure.
Advertising on Quora offers both advantages and disadvantages.
First, Quora features a high-quality audience. Unlike other online environments, Quora’s user base is overwhelmingly positive and informative. An internal team of moderators, along with the Quora community, ensure there’s very little negativity or name-calling. Answers are generally well crafted and carefully thought out. That means your ads are getting in front of a high-quality audience there to solve problems, not make them.
Second, the community on Quora is generally safe and constructive. The Quora community is positive by design. A team of human moderators oversees content, and posts must be attributed to verified real names. Advertiser controls are robust with exclusion capabilities. Only high-quality pages are eligible to run ads.
Finally, Quora’s Advertising dashboard is similar to Facebook’s and Google Ads’, making it very familiar. If you’ve used either of those platforms, you won’t be starting from scratch when creating and analyzing your campaigns.
No platform is perfect, and there are a few disadvantages to advertising on Quora.
First, Quora does not offer video ads. Video content, as opposed to text-based or image-based content, tends to draw in more viewers, but it’s not an option with Quora Ads.
Second, Quora metrics and customization are not as dynamic as those you may be used to with Facebook or Google.
Facebook Ads and Google Ads are currently the two largest digital advertising platforms in terms of ad spend, and they’re likely to remain so for a long time to come. So, it makes sense to continue to use them as the foundation of your online advertising strategy. But supplementing with Quora Ads might be the perfect way to boost your sales and brand authority.