If you want to reach potential customers better, faster and more cost effectively, you’ll have to be a lot more deliberate about how you take your message to market. Though there are times when a broad market, wide reach approach is best, generally, broadcasting your ads to everyone is a high cost model that ultimately yields lower conversion rates than a more targeted approach. One of the best advertising tools available to place your ads in front of the right person at the right time is digital marketing. Proper targeting effectively increases sales without breaking the bank because it puts your ads in front of those most receptive to them.
With digital targeting, you carefully build up your knowledge of your target market's demographics: their age, interests, favorite forms of media, and their problems. Then you can build and broadcast ads that meet your audience on their favorite platforms to discuss their specific needs.
5 Reasons Why You Should Implement Digital Targeting
The goal of every savvy marketer should be to make their ad spends as efficient as possible and utilizing data to target your intended audience will do just that. It can also set you apart from the competition. According to SmallBizGenius, 76% of marketers don’t use behavioral data to target their online ads, meaning that they are missing an opportunity that you are taking advantage of. Let's dive deeper into the key business impacts of digital targeting and why you should implement it.
1. Reach the Right People at the Right Time
Converting a lead is a delicate process. You have to reach the right audience and do it at precisely the right time. Northern homeowners need snow shovels, but not during the summer. Foodies can be tempted into trying meal subscriptions, but may only be tempted when browsing YouTube. When you implement digital marketing, you can test your ad's responsiveness at different times, on different platforms, and in front of different groups to figure out when your ideal group is most receptive.
Pro Tip:
Even if you know who your target market is, digital targeting helps you see new trends in their behaviors. You can even identify brand new audiences to target and expand your business.
2. Gain a Better Understanding of Who Is Seeing Your Ads
When you first start a new ad campaign on social media platforms like Facebook, the algorithm won’t immediately identify likely leads and visitors who engage with your brand. It needs time to learn and you can learn with it. Analyze your digital targeting reports to identify which ads resonate with different niches, ages, genders, and more. If you change your focus to a slightly different audience and engagement suddenly rockets upward, you know who to target.
However, you can only make use of the data if you start collecting the data. Begin your digital targeting by testing ads in front of different audiences and seeing what the data says.
3. Know If Your Ads Resonate With Your Target Audience
Some ad campaigns miss the mark, and that's okay. What's important is that you give the ads enough time to test the waters and then respond the right way if traction doesn't pick up. A killer ad campaign may fizzle out for lots of different reasons and experimental campaigns may miss the mark with your target market. The only way to know in time to salvage your marketing budget is to:
- Be sure your ads are pointed in the right direction
- Watch the results on engagements, click-throughs, and conversions
Without the first element, you won't know why your marketing efforts aren't panning out how you anticipated. Without the second element, you won't know how your digital marketing efforts are panning out.
4. Don't Waste Your Money Putting Ads In Front of People Who Won't Benefit From Them
Your products and services aren't for everyone. If you have a fitness clothing brand, you don't want to pay to put PPC ads in front of people shopping for their pets. But if you sell gardening supplies, you want to be right there on the screen when someone searches for "how to grow an herb garden."
Digital targeting allows you to take advantage of search targeting so you can reach prospective customers based on their searches. Like inbound marketing, this lets you be there when people need your business. It also protects your bottom line by making sure you aren't paying for ads when they don't need you.
According to Statista, $121 billion is being spent on digital advertising in the United States alone. Make sure your portion of that spending is actually bringing your company value.
5. Increase Brand Awareness For the Right Audience
Your company isn't meant to be the right fit for everyone. No matter what your niche is, your core target audience is only a select bunch of consumers that's grouped together based on their age, geographic region, interests, and income. Focus on increasing brand awareness to that audience. Designing your brand for mass-market appeal makes it forgettable. Striving to please everyone leaves you serving no one. Instead, you should focus on becoming bright, memorable, and uniquely helpful for your target market.
Digital targeting helps your ads and personality get in front of people who will like it. You can do this with a type of digital targeting called audience segmentation:
- If your target market loves comedy, tie your ads to comedy websites and YouTube channels.
- If your target market likes true crime podcasts, funnel your attention there.
Digital Targeting and Your Strategy
In one way or another, digital targeting may sound like strategies you've already adopted. But deliberate digital targeting is more powerful. As you learn more and more about your target market's demographics and psychographic, you can focus your marketing more and more precisely on them. This doesn't just increase your ROI by helping you find more leads with fewer ads, it stops you from wasting money on putting ads in front of the wrong audience.
