If you’re involved in any type of marketing, you have most likely heard of the increasingly pressing need for personalization. From SEO to PPC and beyond, seasoned marketers will swear by the importance of targeting in advertising, content, and outreach. It’s an essential part of a successful business marketing plan, they’ll argue – and they’ll be right. To illustrate this, let us first explore the importance and value of targeting. We’ll then outline the fundamentals of getting started with targeting to give you something actionable to work with.
Targeting in advertising; the personalization mantra and why it matters
At its core, targeting is a simple enough concept. It’s the process of identifying one’s key audiences, tailoring content and ads to them, and approaching them on their platforms of choice. It applies to SEO, which your business absolutely needs, PPC, content marketing, social media marketing, and more.
Why that’s valuable is just as simple. Targeting is a crucial component of personalization, the ever-present mantra of modern digital marketing. And personalization truly matters, according to the customers themselves.
To illustrate this, consider McKinsey’s personalization survey and customers’ responses:
- 67% expect relevant product/service recommendations, second only to easy website/stone navigation
- 66% expect messaging tailored to their needs
- 65% want targeted promotions
- 59% expect timely communications tied to key moments
- 58% expect post-purchase follow-ups
- 54% prefer communications personally addressed to them
- 53% expect triggers based on their behavior
To top it off, 71% of customers expect personalization, and 76% get frustrated when they don’t find it.
As such, that customers expect and like being targeted is the bedrock of the value of personalization. That’s far from the only benefit. However, that’s just the foundation for all the others.
The benefits of targeting in advertising
So, which are said benefits? With the introduction of personalization, you may already suspect a few, but let us delve into specifics.
#1 It enhances engagement
First and foremost, targeting is all about catering to specific audiences. Refining your copy to best resonate with them and their pain points makes your ads relevant to them. It only follows that ads your audiences are more likely to be invested in yield higher engagement rates.
Engagement is no vanity metric either; it’s the first step toward increasing your ROI. And even if it doesn’t lead to a conversion every time, it will still create a positive touchpoint. The rule of seven still applies to marketing, and those seven pre-conversion touchpoints need to start with engagement.
#2 It improves conversion rates
Speaking of engagement, it does indeed tend to yield higher conversion rates. This also likely stands to reason; audiences are far more likely to buy from you if your ads are engaging and relevant to them. The more closely your ads match their needs and interests, the higher their conversion rates.
Beyond the engagement angle, LinkedIn’s Dinesh Kumar Vellaiyan explains the benefit of targeting in advertising through lead quality. He argues that targeting attracts higher-quality leads and audiences much more likely to convert than unqualified leads.
#3 It saves on costs
Third, being specific and efficient in who you target can only save on advertising costs. There’s a reason Google Ads includes audience data and targeting settings; running campaigns without them is among the most common and avoidable mistakes, cost-wise.
PPC ads have the inherent perk of only costing once they generate a click. However, clicks by disinterested audiences are not uncommon; ones that produce little subsequent engagement and rarely lead to conversions. No business, regardless of size, should welcome that unnecessary budget strain – precisely what targeted advertising seeks to address.
#4 It builds trust
Beyond immediate campaign benefits like the above, targeted ads also help build trust with your audiences. This is far from a secondary benefit, as the Edelman Trust Barometer has been asserting for years. The rift in trust between businesses and consumers is only widening, which helps neither party.
Targeting in advertising helps build trust in two distinct ways, among others. One is plain familiarity, cultivated through multiple touchpoints; customers are more likely to trust businesses they’ve seen before and recognized. The other is credibility built through consistent ad focus and tailored copy; audiences trust those who seem best equipped to address their needs and approach them professionally.
#5 It improves future campaigns
And finally, targeted advertising directly improves future campaigns. It does so in various ways, some of which depend on one’s exact campaigns, but three main ones bear noting.
First, it helps generate more leads for your website. This influx of traffic directly enhances your SEO score by producing more engagement signals. In turn, your subsequent campaigns will have a larger potential audience to tap into.
Second, for that matter, it directly helps raise brand awareness even outside of SEO. PR Newswire finds that “about 6 in 10 consumers (59%) frequently notice digital ads for brands, products, or services they have previously searched for”. This, they argue, contributes to the rule of seven and builds brand awareness.
And third, targeted ad campaigns create better historical data to later tap into. The more you focus on a specific audience and grasp their sensibilities, the better your subsequent campaigns will do.
Targeting in advertising – where to begin
Having covered the benefits of targeted advertising, let us now cover its fundamentals before concluding. For text economy, and because exact implementations will differ drastically, we’ll only touch on its fundamental principles here.
#1 Start with audience segmentation
First, you can only target audiences effectively if you understand them. For this crucial first step, you may consult your CRM, historical PPC data, website analytics, and other insights. Once you do, you may delve into one – or more – of the four main types of audience segmentation:
- Demographics; your audience groups’ demographics and innate characteristics
- Psychographics; your segments’ interests, values, etc
- Behavioral; your segments’ recurring behavior patterns
- Geographic; your segments’ location and any unique factors therein
From there, you may build customer personas and tailor ads to them and their customer journey.
#2 Diversify and use your platforms’ built-in tools
As you do, you may approach the customer journey more holistically. For example, different valuable audience segments may reside on various social media platforms or use different search engines. In such cases, you may start diversifying your marketing channels in turn – both expanding your reach and collecting actionable data.
If you do, an excellent approach here would be to mind each platform’s inherent tools. For instance, Facebook offers vast audience insights that may fuel your PPC campaigns. As highlighted above, Google Ads also has powerful built-in targeting tools, which your segmentation can leverage.
#3 Personalize, even if modestly
Once you do, remember that personalization is what targeting in advertising truly hinges on. You can, by all means, craft elaborate behavioral marketing campaigns on email triggers, but you can also start much smaller. It’s typically best to gradually build up to more comprehensive strategies, after all.
For this step, you may personalize your message for a specific audience segment. Use their occupation, interests, or pain points to tailor your outreach to them. If you’re using email in combination, simply adding your recipients’ names can help tremendously – and push them along the customer journey.
#4 Retarget and insist
And finally, despite your best efforts, targeting may often still fail. That’s just an inescapable part of marketing; most visitors don’t stay, most audiences don’t convert, and so on. When it does, don’t be discouraged; retarget your audiences and insist.
Retargeting is such a potent tool that covering it would require a dedicated article. In brief, it builds on the rule of seven and directly enhances brand awareness. The vast majority of marketers use it, and statistics show it can increase conversion rates by up to a stunning 161%. It’s the perfect follow-up to targeted advertising and an asset too valuable to overlook.
Conclusion
In summary, the sheer value of targeting in advertising cannot be overstated. This potent marketing tool helps boost engagement rates and conversions, saves on costs, builds trust with audiences, informs future campaigns, and more. Its benefits stem from its very core as a practice that seeks to target engaged audiences and cater to them. While brief, we hope this article helped you get started with targeted advertising. If you need additional information or advertising services, please feel free to contact us today. Our full-service advertising agency will be more than happy to guide you through targeting, retargeting, and any other advertising practices or tools your business may need to thrive.
About the author:
Dean Anderson is a licensed psychologist and freelance copywriter with a keen interest in SEO. He frequently contributes to Archstone Behavioral Health, where he discusses addiction and dual diagnoses, and he often collaborates with SMBs in the relocation and AEC industries.