Targeting the consumers that are most likely to engage with and purchase from your brand has many benefits for an enterprise: improved marketing spend and ROI, increased customer engagement, and most importantly, increased sales.

In a recent survey, 55% of marketing executives said that better use of data for more effective targeting is a priority in 2019. Most companies simplistically segment their audiences, using demographic and basic website data to break down the mass audience to the people that have shown interest in the brand already.

This strategy is useful to a point, but improvements in data analytics have opened an entirely new approach to audience targeting. Companies can use different types of data to build profiles of current and prospective customers and gain actionable insights to select the best channel, messaging, and positioning to maximize results.

Audience targeting techniques that go beyond the basics include:

Ad platforms can help you gather data on who is visiting your website, and which web pages they spend the most time on. However, exploring advanced settings can provide a much more complete picture of the customer. For example, in Google Ads, an advertiser can create weighted spend strategies depending on the individual customer’s location, device, or demographics and allocate more advertising in front of those most likely to convert.

Google Ads can also improve retail advertising to affinity audiences. These audiences are categorized based on a shared interest:

• In-market audiences have actively searched for a product or service similar to your own
• Life event audiences are grouped based on a similar major life event occurring, such as graduation, moving, or a change in family status.

It is important to remember that different ad platforms appeal to different audiences and change messaging accordingly. Using the same advertisement on all platforms is the digital equivalent of a mass mailing – sure, you might reach interested customers, but you significantly weaken the strength of your messaging.

For example, millennials are almost twice as likely to discover a brand through social media than baby boomers. If a company is planning social media messaging, they may consider incorporating video, story-telling, and corporate social responsibility (CSR) messaging to build brand awareness. Customers visiting the company website are further along the marketing funnel – aware of the brand and exploring products and services. Owned website advertisements should engage the consumer visually, with fresh, value-driven content offerings to promote engagement and conversion.

Remarketing involves targeting customers that have already shown interest in your products or services. After they first engage with your brand, you can re-engage them with a highly personalized offer at a later date using the data you gathered during the previous interaction.

One company realized a 161% improvement in sales as the result of a remarketing campaign; while a more general study found that customers were 70% more likely to convert when retargeted with display ads.

Location data can be used to incorporate data about offline customer behavior, providing insight into consumers’ real-world activities. Information may include demographic indicators: where do customers travel, dine, and shop; or at a higher level, insight into customer habits and interests. Seeing where consumers go in real life provides valuable information that can be used for more effective targeting, helping a company to refine messaging and audience and improve overall sales.

Advanced audience targeting is a critical component of strategic marketing, making it possible to maximize marketing spend and effectiveness and giving your organization the best chance of reaching the right person, with the right message, at precisely the right moment.

Many tools are available to help you gather data and access consumer analytics, but Gravy Analytics goes the extra step and provides reliable, accurate, and clean location intelligence. This data allows marketers to gain a deeper understanding of the customer and a powerful competitive advantage.

As a location intelligence company, Gravy uses location data to build standard and custom advertising audiences, enabling the delivery of personalized, targeted advertisements to individual users on their mobile device. This ability greatly simplifies audience targeting, improving the chances of delivering effective marketing messaging, engaging current and new customers, and driving sales, revenues, and growth.

https://econsultancy.com/majority-of-marketers-data-audience-targeting-priority-2019/
https://services.google.com/fh/files/misc/casestudy-rlsa-tirendo.pdf
https://www.business2community.com/marketing/17-retargeting-ad-statistics-will-make-retarget-right-now-2-infographics-01464774