Archive for Online Audience Targeting
Inventive Online Audience Targeting
If you’re somewhat new to online audience targeting, this blog post will help point you in the right direction. Or you can click the “contact“ link and get right to The V12 Group.
Online audience targeting is perhaps the best way to improve your PPC campaign and other marketing strategies by segmenting your audience.
Here’s an example of the power of this data. Let’s say someone is looking for a vacation to the Virgin Islands. After finding some good websites, this person changes directions and looks up football scores on ESPN. Even though ESPN has nothing to do with vacationing, an ad about a vacation to the Virgin Islands appears, which promptly causes the person to click the ad. Most people who encounter such advertising are amazed and delighted that the website knows they were looking for such information. It’s the ultimate in personalized marketing.
Generally how online audience targeting works
Online audience targeting is a sophisticated, yet simple way to section the market. When someone goes to most major websites, cookies are implanted in the person’s computer. These cookies record data such as trends, common searches and demographics. By working with this, you can easily make an effective online marketing campaign.
But the real horse power comes when a rich mix of data are combined with cookie data. At The V12 Group, we have a unique method of combining the analog (offline) and digital (online) worlds. We gather data from offline resources like catalog and magazine subscriber databases, and household and county deed records.
Catalog and magazine subscriber lists are a wonderfully precise source of self-selected data; the consumer enters it – so you know it’s accurate. As a marketer, knowing what publications your targets read and what items they purchase from catalogs can provide a real insight into their needs and buying habits. This will enable marketers to tailor offerings based on interest area, preferred buying method (i.e. – online vs. offline), frequency of purchases, and much more.
When this data is combined with online resources, you can begin to build comprehensive customer profiles that will vastly improve your audience segmentation and the effectiveness of your on-line advertising campaigns.
There’s an incredible amount of rich data in offline sources that many of today’s digital marketing database companies ignore, but at The V12 Group we are able to map that off-line “real world” demographic, lifestyle and purchase data into privacy compliant data segments that is one of THE most valuable online audience targeting techniques available today.
Through our partnerships with leading third party advertisers, the V12 Group connects our offline data to over half of the 220 million individuals in the US. These individuals are mapped to 196 distinct audience segments, helping you target the right consumers online.
Targeting the funnel
You must choose part of the “funnel,” or your target audience, before you can properly perform online audience targeting. The funnel consists of three parts, or three different groups of people. The top of the funnel, which is large, consists of the most people and has wide demographic information. This is good if people are nationally aware of your brand.
The middle of the funnel is smaller, but still somewhat broad. This is best if people know about your brand, but only in one or several states. The bottom of the funnel contains the least amount of people, but the demographic is very tight and it works best for new businesses.
Online audience targeting, right in any economy
Perhaps the only disadvantage to sectioning off your audience is that you cannot market to everyone, reducing the amount of people that might buy your product. If you’re a broad-based regional retailer, perhaps this sort of “broadcast” marketing is right for you. We prefer to think of what we do as enabling “broad-net.” We cast a very precise net out to a much more carefully selected target.
There are very few products and businesses that can cater to everyone, and to do so requires a lot of money and brand awareness. Instead, you can target only those consumers who are more likely to buy your product. The more personal your conversation is, the more you will increase your marketing efficiency and improves sales. Think of it, would you rather attract 1% of 1,000 or 30% of 100?
Contact The V12 Group if you’re ready to cast a very wide, yet very precise net. Our unique mix of offline and online data will make your online audience targeting campaign much more powerful.
