Digital is becoming an increasingly important channel for marketing and sales today. Consumers are using the internet to research and guide their purchase decisions, and to engage with brands and topics that they care about. Whether you are a start-up or a multi-million dollar business, you cannot afford to ignore digital marketing, especially as it has been one of the most resilient types of marketing channels in recent times, despite the global pandemic.
There are multiple options for organic and paid promotion on digital, and if one really wants to make the most of the medium, it makes sense to explore both these sides. While organic methods will usually need some time to start showing results, paid advertising is a great way to reach out to your relevant target audiences online and drive visits, conversions and sales in a short time span.
But not all paid marketing online will give the same results, and a large part of their success boils down to the right selection of target audience.
Why it is important to target right
The right message at the right time to the right audience – this dictum sums up the basics of pretty much any type of marketing, including digital. With the right targeting in place, you can ensure that you are engaging with only the people who really matter, and all other things being good, this one thing can greatly increase the chances of your campaign’s success.
This is important even when you are catering to a large and diverse audience group. Unlike most traditional ATL and BTL channels, where there is always a chance of spillage and therefore a need to cast a wider net just to be able to reach your target audience, digital marketing offers the opportunity to be very precise in your targeting.
In case you are wondering if it will really make that big a difference to your campaign metrics, consider the scenarios below.
- Marketing to the wrong audience can be an expensive mistake.
Suppose that you are doing a CPC campaign for a specific health package at many age groups can benefit from. You decide to use a creative tone and design that would likely appeal to a wide demographic audience that is looking for health packages in general. However, if you are not very clear in your audience targeting, it is possible to attract a lot of people who might be looking for something more general, and who might not be interested in what you are promoting, and who might quickly move on to your competitors. Even if we take an average CPC of $2.5, you would end up spending a significant amount on attracting visitors that aren’t quite keen to complete the purchase. Moreover, not just the target audience but the manner in which you are delivering your messages can define your overall expenses. In some cases, Text message marketing, for example, using channels like tatango, can be more economical and in some cases, email marketing channels can make more sense. All in all, you need to factor in the audience and also how you are going to deliver your messages in order to manage the overall cost.
- Wrong targeting can compromise your Quality Score
Having the wrong targeting can also affect the quality score or relevance score that you can otherwise earn. Most large platforms such as Google and Facebook assign a quality score based on how relevant is your ad content to your target audience. One of the ways they measure this is by looking at the time spent on your landing pages. If there is a high bounce rate, it signals a low relevance between what your target audience wants, and what you have to offer. This bumps down your quality score, and you might need to spend more to reach the same audience, as compared to a competitor that has a better quality ranking.
So, how can you really get your targeting right?
There are many different ways you can go about this. Some marketers might want to approach this the way they approach traditional – that is, plastering the ads across all possible digital mediums, and ensuring that it is seen by all. This isn’t always the best approach, and also requires a huge investment. I would instead urge you all to focus on some basics, which are often forgotten, and how you can use these basics to get the most out of your paid campaigns.
- Target Audience Segmentation
If you appeal to a niche market, segmenting your audience is easy. However, if your market consists of a rather broad group of people across different demographics, it would be good to invest the time to get your segmentation right. You can have multiple audience segments based on certain common characteristics in each group. These characteristics could be anything from age, location, life stage, interests, intent, their socio economic class and so on.
You could always go with a generic campaign targeting all these different groups, or you could create different campaigns and landing pages for each subset of your audience. I recommend the latter approach, as this usually performs better as compared to a one-size fits-all approach. Google PPC campaigns allow you to segment by demographics and intent, whereas Facebook can allow you to be as granular as you wish to be.
- Understanding Audience Motivation
So, once you have narrowed down your audience segmentation, the next step to consider is what it is that they really want, and why would they want to buy the product or service you are selling. This will help you to understand them better – from their preferences and latent motivations to their decision-making process, and allow you to choose the right channels and the right messaging. For example, if your target audience has a heavy presence on social media, consider campaigns on those platforms and using a hashtag generator to maximize your reach to them.
You could get your data from market and customer research, and base your targeting and communication on solid audience data. As a marketer or business owner, it is natural to have some gut instincts. And while we should always trust these, it would be good to back up your instincts with facts and data, to be on the safer side.
- Exclude the groups that aren’t relevant
What is really great about marketing online is that not only can you get really precise about who you want to reach out to, you can be as precise for those you do not want to reach out to! If your audience group contains subsets that would not be the best fit for your campaign, you can easily choose to exclude those subsets from your overall targeting. This can come in handy in remarketing campaigns towards interested prospects, where you can exclude the people who have actually made a purchase. This will prevent wasted clicks, and will allow you to have a sharper focus on a specific group.
Getting your target audience right might not be a cakewalk, and would entail multiple rounds of trial and error, and can consume time and resources. However, when you do get this right, it will definitely reap rich rewards, with regards to campaign efficacy and performance.
