The Importance of Strategy in Reaching your Target Audience

by Naveed A. Writer

Segment, Target, Position, Contextualize and Win

[Free Takeaway Inside –Ready-to-Use E-Commerce Segments]

The days of “spray and pray” marketing—where brands would distribute their ads to as many people as possible and hope the right audience noticed—are long gone. Today’s marketers understand the importance of data-driven, highly targeted campaigns.

It’s certainly much-needed progress, but there’s still more work to do. For one thing, many marketers still leverage segmentation using demographic data that have their inherent limits. What’s more effective is looking at your audience’s online behavior—recent purchases, the apps they’re using, what they’re searching for —and using these insights to serve them contextually relevant, personalized creative.

That’s exactly what Groupon did in its YouTube ads campaign, back in 2017. While previously the company primarily relied upon email marketing to send personalized offers; they had to shift to a mobile-centric strategy in order to reach mobile-savvy audiences.

That’s when they decided to work on their social media presence and opted to focus on YouTube video ads to boost brand awareness. As part of their video targeting strategy, they defined their target segments based on the search behavioural patterns of users. Subsequently, they tailored their ad creative and content to each audience segment. They created a memorable candy-colored montage with an unplugged jingle that had a bizarre yet catchy ring to it. Each YouTube bumper ad had different variations for viewers of “style videos,” “foodie videos,” “beauty videos,” “family videos” and “travel videos,” driving users to install the Groupon App and start saving.

As a result of this campaign they acquired around 160,000 new customers and witnessed a lift in brand favourability over 20%.

No matter what social media bells and whistles we have available in the future, the power of hyper-relevant targeting remains impregnable. Outlining a strategy for defining and reaching your target audience is imperative for the success of ad campaigns, regardless of which media vehicle you use to run them.

The Importance of Strategic Targeting Approach

Targeting in marketing is important because it’s a part of a holistic digital marketing strategy. It has an overarching impact on not just advertising but also customer experience, branding, and operational excellence.

When your company focuses on a strategic target market segmentation approach, you can do the following:

1. Cater to the Needs of a Defined Audience Segment

In trying to please everybody, you end up pleasing nobody. Marketing messages resonate deeply with audiences only when it relates to their needs and interests. Brands that have a large heterogeneous target market of customers often struggle with creating ad campaigns that speak directly to their audience. Creating targeted customer segments can break down your target market into manageable clusters and focus on personalizing messages for each homogenous subgroup. This way you can get as close as possible to aligning your campaigns with individual customers’ needs.

2. Attract and Convert High-Quality Leads

When your campaigns resonate with the right audiences, you are likely to attract high-quality leads in your sales pipeline that will eventually convert to customers. It is estimated that only 44% of marketing qualified leads passed through sales as a potential good fit for the business. Here’s how you can generate marketing qualified leads by formulating an effective targeting strategy:

· Map your ideal buyer profile and lay out the explicit and implicit characteristics that make them a relevant candidate for business

· Determine ideal content types and channels that can be used to attract buyers

· Tap into buyer intent data to improve lead quality to understand what they are seeking and discover the stage of their purchase journey

3. Identify a Underserved Niche

When refining your target audience segments based on various demographic and behavioural parameters, you may identify the underserved or unmet needs of a specific group. This will help you carve out a niche market and position yourself as a go-to brand for a specific audience. You can also establish a unique value proposition that makes it easier for the customers to connect with your brand. Start by defining a broad target audience and drill down further to identify profitable niche segments using behavioural trends and keyword research.

4. Build Deeper Customer Loyalty

The ability to stand out from competitors by reaching your customers on a more personal, human level also creates longer-lasting relationships. When customers identify with your brand and feel like you are an advocate for their specific perspectives and needs, they will likely be more loyal to your brand and continue to do business with you over a longer period of time.

Stages in Target Marketing Strategy Development

Through segmentation, you can identify niches with specific needs or find new customers in mature markets and deliver more focused and effective marketing messages. The stages of developing a targeting strategy include the following:

· Defining Segmentation Criteria – Divide the target market into distinct groups of customers using various types of demographic, behavioural and psychographic segmentation techniques

· Evaluate and Select Target Segments – Determine which segment is profitable and valuable to the business

· Identify a Differentiate Proposition for Each Segment – Create a product positioning and marketing mix that is most likely to appeal to the selected audience. You can follow positioning paths based on price, benefits, value, prestige, competitors and other unique attributes.

· Deploy Resources to Create Tailored and Contextual Content for Target Segments – Create highly contextual and personalized marketing communications to target specific segments

All in all, casting a wide net to capture every customer makes it more likely that a brand’s ideal audience may slip right through it. Instead, deploy a strategic net to draw your ideal audience and make them cling to your brand with a focused messaging.

Formulating a strategic targeting plan can take some time, during which there will be much trial and error. As you learn the ins and outs of defining target segments for your business, categorize your marketing campaigns that have best resonated with your target audience and led to conversions.

You can classify these campaigns under different monikers based on ideal buyer profiles, high-performing content or best-converting marketing channels to refer to them in the future. Wherever your best customers came from, there are many more you can reach in the same way.