Tag: social-media-advertising

Just Target It: How Nike Uses Audience Segmentation to Win on Paid Social
Audience segmentation is one of the most powerful tools in paid social media marketing. Instead of sending the same message to everyone, brands divide audiences into smaller groups based on shared characteristics. This allows them to deliver personalized messaging that improves engagement, lowers wasted ad spend, and increases conversions.

In this post, I analyze how Nike uses demographic, geographic, behavioral, and psychographic segmentation to improve paid social performance. Using SEMrush data and competitor comparisons, I translate audience insights into actionable paid social strategies, including Custom Audiences and Lookalike Audiences.

Nike’s Target Audience: What the Data Shows

Using SEMrush Traffic Analytics tool, I analyzed nike.com and compared it to competitors and other popular searches like Adidas, Puma, and Dick’s Sporting Goods.

Key Demographic Insights
- Age: The largest segment is 25–34 (25%), followed by 35–44 and 45–54.
- Gender: 54.24% female, 45.76% male.
- Top Countries: United States (31.9%), United Kingdom (9.22%), Germany (5.94%).
- Device Usage: 71.57% mobile vs. 28.43% desktop.
- Income: Primarily low (46.51%) and middle income (39.51%).
- Employment: Nearly half work full-time.
- Education: Compulsory school and university-level education are nearly equal.
Demographic data generated in SEMrush.

Behavioral & Interest Patterns

Nike users frequently visit retail and fashion sites and consume mass media content. Social platform usage is strongest on YouTube (57.21%), followed by Instagram and Facebook. Competitor overlap suggests consumers compare brands before purchasing.

Turning Research Into Paid Social Segments

Based on this data, Nike could build three primary paid social audience segments:
1. Performance-Driven Professionals (25–34, mobile-first users)
2. Lifestyle Athleisure Shoppers (fashion-conscious, cross-shopping with Adidas and ASOS)
3. Value-Conscious Active Families (low-to-middle income households, 2–4 people)
Segmentation helps Nike tailor messaging, visuals, and offers to each group. A 29-year-old professional scrolling Instagram after work requires different creative than a parent shopping for school athletic gear.

As Sharon Lee Thony explains in The Marketing Campaign Playbook, successful campaigns resonate deeply with the intended audience. Understanding who your customers are, what they want and need, and how they behave is crucial to targeting them correctly and effectively. This data gives Nike the clarity needed to better understand its consumers and strategically reach them.

Buyer Persona: “Driven Dana”

To humanize the data, here is a sample persona following the guidelines outlined in The Marketing Campaign Playbook.

Age: 29
Occupation: Marketing Coordinator
Location: United States
Income: $60,000
Education: Bachelor’s Degree

Goals
- Train for a half marathon
- Advance professionally
- Maintain work-life balance
Challenges
- Limited time to exercise
- Finding stylish yet functional gear
Interests
- Running
- Wellness podcasts
- Social media
Values
- Inclusivity
- Motivation
- Authenticity
Buying Behavior
- Shops on mobile
- Reads reviews
- Responds to influencer content
Campaign Idea

“Built for your grind. Just keep going.”

Buyer personas transform traffic data into messaging strategy. Nike is not marketing to “25–34-year-olds.” It is marketing to people like Dana.

How Nike Uses Custom Audiences

Custom audiences allow brands to target users who have already interacted with them. For Nike, this includes:
- Website visitors
- Cart abandoners
- Past purchasers
- Nike app users
- Email subscribers
- Social media engagers
If Dana browses running shoes but does not purchase, Nike can retarget her with dynamic ads showing the exact product she viewed. This is behavioral segmentation at work.

Research consistently shows that retargeted users are significantly more likely to convert than cold audiences because they have already demonstrated purchase intent. Retargeting also tends to lower cost per acquisition compared to broad targeting because ads are shown to high-intent users.

Nike can further segment custom audiences:
- Recent buyers: Cross-sell socks or performance gear.
- High-value repeat customers: Promote membership perks.
- Lapsed buyers: Offer limited-time discounts.
As Olivier Blanchard notes in Social Media ROI, paid social platforms provide measurable performance data. Nike can evaluate click-through rate, cost per action, and return on ad spend by audience segment. This ensures optimization decisions are based on data, not assumptions.

Expanding Reach With Lookalike Audiences

When Nike identifies a high-performing custom audience, it can create a lookalike audience to scale performance.

A strong source audience might include:
- High-value repeat purchasers
- Nike Training Club app subscribers
- Email subscribers with high engagement
Lookalike audiences use machine learning to find new users who share similar characteristics, behaviors, and interests with proven customers.

For example, if Nike builds a lookalike audience from repeat marathon shoe buyers, the algorithm may find users who:
- Follow running influencers
- Engage with race content
- Purchase athletic gear frequently
This allows Nike to expand reach while maintaining relevance.

Segmentation at this stage protects efficiency. Instead of targeting “all sports fans,” Nike targets people who resemble its best customers.

Real-World Example: “You Can’t Stop Us”

One of Nike’s most powerful segmentation-driven campaigns was the 2020 “You Can’t Stop Us” initiative.

The campaign used a split-screen video composed of thousands of hours of footage. It targeted audiences interested in sports, active lifestyles, and social causes during a time of pandemic disruption and social unrest.

This campaign leaned heavily into psychographic segmentation. Nike aligned with values such as resilience, unity, and inclusivity. The video generated tens of millions of views within days and drove massive social engagement.

The success demonstrates that segmentation goes beyond demographics. It taps into shared identity and belief systems.

Why Audience Segmentation Drives Paid Social Success

Audience segmentation improves paid social performance because it:
- Increases message relevance
- Improves click-through rates
- Lowers cost per acquisition
- Boosts return on ad spend
Industry research consistently shows that personalized ads outperform generic messaging in both engagement and conversion rates. When brands layer demographic, behavioral, geographic, and psychographic data, they create campaigns that feel timely and relevant.

Nike’s strategy combines:
- Demographic targeting (age, gender, income)
- Geographic targeting (U.S., U.K., Germany)
- Behavioral targeting (site visits, purchases, app usage)
- Psychographic targeting (motivation, resilience, cultural values)
By translating SEMrush research into segmented paid social audiences, Nike can ensure that its creative, placement, and messaging align with real user behavior.

Paid social success is not about reaching everyone. It is about reaching the right someone with the right message at the right moment.

Nike continues to prove that when segmentation is strategic and data-driven, performance follows.
February 22, 2026
From Strategy to Sign-Ups: Designing a Conversion-Driven Paid Social Campaign
Designing a paid social media ad is never just about creating something visually compelling; it’s about developing a strategy that aligns creative decisions, targeting, and budget with a clearly defined business objective. When organizations invest in paid advertising, effective targeting is everything. Who the business targets and how they reach them will ultimately determine whether the campaign achieves its goals.

So how did I approach designing a paid social media ad and the strategy behind it?

To guide my planning process, I followed Sharon Thony’s framework outlined in The Marketing Campaign Playbook, which emphasizes intentional campaign design rooted in clear objectives, audience understanding, and measurable outcomes. Using this framework helped ensure that every decision made during the planning phase directly supports the campaign’s primary goal.

Campaign Framework: Strategy First, Creative Second

Before building the ad itself, I grounded the campaign in six strategic steps inspired by Thony’s guidelines:
1. Define campaign objectives – Clearly establish what success looks like.
2. Identify the target audience – Understand who the campaign is designed to reach.
3. Develop a content strategy – Align messaging and creative with campaign goals.
4. Set timelines and budgets – Establish realistic constraints for execution.
5. Define key performance indicators (KPIs) – Determine how success will be measured.
6. Prepare for execution and optimization – Plan how performance will be monitored and refined once the campaign is live.
This framework ensured the campaign was built strategically from the start.

Business & Campaign Overview

For this campaign, I designed a paid social media ad for The Pathway School, a nonprofit special education school where I work. The campaign promotes the school’s annual spring golf fundraiser, FORE! The Kids Golf Outing, taking place on May 19.

This event is one of the school’s key fundraising initiatives, supporting programs and resources for students. Historically, the outing sells approximately 100 golfer spots out of a maximum of 120. This campaign is designed to help close that gap and move the event toward a sellout.

Campaign Objective: Driving Conversions

The primary objective of this paid social campaign is to increase golfer registrations (sales) through Facebook and Instagram advertising.

Specifically, the campaign is designed to:
- Drive at least 10 additional golfer registrations
- Increase golfer participation by 10%
- Generate registrations through link clicks leading to completed sign-ups
Rather than focusing on awareness or engagement, the campaign is intentionally structured around conversion-driven outcomes, ensuring that budget and targeting decisions support measurable revenue growth.

Campaign Optimization Goal

The ad’s performance goal is to maximize number of conversions, with completed golfer registrations serving as the key action.

Optimizing for conversions allows the advertising platform to prioritize users most likely to complete the registration process, rather than users who may only view or click on the ad. This approach aligns directly with the campaign’s revenue-focused objective.

Platforms & Ad Placements

Ads will run on Facebook and Instagram, where The Pathway School already has an established presence and strong engagement with donors and community supporters.

Placements are intentionally selected to appear in high-visibility feed and story environments, ensuring the ad reaches users in spaces where they are most likely to engage and take action.

Target Audience Strategy

The targeting strategy combines demographic targeting, interest and behavior-based targeting, and first-party data to reach both existing supporters and high-quality new prospects.

Core Demographics
- Gender: Male
- Age: 40–69
- Location: Within a 20-mile radius of the golf course (which includes the school)
- Education Level: College Grad
This demographic profile closely aligns with past golf outing participants and typical charity golf event audiences.

Interests & Behaviors

The campaign targets users with demonstrated interest in:
- Golf and golf-related activities
- Community involvement and charitable causes
- Education advocacy
Behavioral targeting prioritizes individuals who:
- Interested in upcoming events
- Engage with nonprofit or fundraising content
- Interact with Facebook Events and local organizations
- Click on or engage with sponsored content
These behaviors indicate a higher likelihood of completing an online registration, supporting the campaign’s conversion-focused goal.

Lookalike Audience

To strengthen targeting efficiency, the campaign leverages first-party data from previous golf outings:
- Lookalike Audience: New users who share similar characteristics and behaviors
Using a lookalike audience will attract new golfers to the outing that have the same interests as current golf attendees.

Budget & Timeline

The total campaign budget is set at $200, consistent with prior years’ promotional spending for the event. The budget will be distributed over a 2 week period leading up to May 12, the registration deadline, allowing time for optimization and sustained visibility.

Given the focused audience and conversion-driven objective, this budget is expected to contribute meaningfully toward the goal of selling out the event.

Success Metrics & KPIs

Success metrics are intentionally aligned with the campaign’s primary objective.

Primary Metric
- Cost Per Acquisition (CPA): Measures the cost of each golfer registration and serves as the primary indicator of success.
Secondary Metrics
- Conversion Rate: Evaluates how effectively ad traffic converts into completed registrations.
- Cost Per Mille (CPM): Assesses audience efficiency and helps identify opportunities to reduce wasted impressions.
While click-through rate (CTR) will be monitored as an indicator of creative relevance, overall success will be evaluated based on completed registrations rather than engagement alone.

Planned Monitoring & Optimization

When the campaign launches, performance will be monitored regularly to ensure it is reaching the intended audience and driving conversions efficiently. If CPA or CPM trends higher than anticipated, targeting parameters and creative elements will be adjusted to improve performance and maximize budget efficiency.

Final Takeaway

This campaign planning process highlights the importance of grounding paid social media advertising in clear objectives and intentional strategy. By aligning targeting, placements, budget, and success metrics with a single conversion goal, the campaign is designed to move beyond visibility and drive meaningful action.
February 8, 2026