BY Kathy Crosett
Digital marketing strategies were supposed to deliver a superior experience to both marketers and consumers. In a perfect world, consumers only see ads for products and services that interest them. And marketers could target consumers based on online behaviors such as exhibiting purchase intent. Instead, consumers continue to see ads for products they may have searched for only once. Are your clients missing an opportunity to get the right ads in front of the right consumers?
Reach Target Markets with Marketing Strategies
To reach target markets with marketing plans, your clients need to cut through a lot of clutter. Consumers see plenty of advertising, and most may say too much on a daily basis. And the relevance of the advertising is an issue. Regardless of the format, consumers say advertising is frequently or sometimes irrelevant on specific platforms as follows:
- Websites — 42%
- Streaming audio — 47%
- Ad-supported streaming services — 48%
- Cable TV — 53%
- Network TV — 54%
- Local TV — 59%
Reaching Target Audiences with Relevant Advertising
While your clients don’t want to waste money on advertising or digital marketing strategies that nobody pays attention to, they also don’t want to aggravate potential purchasers as the era of online cookie tracking fades.
The Privacy Study from the Advertising Research Foundation found that your clients face a tricky situation because a significant percentage of consumers, between 25% to 40%, don’t want to be targeted individually. For example, consumers generally don’t want to give up their addresses and financial or medical information in exchange for targeted advertising.
Relevance by Marketing Format
Some marketers have shifted their marketing strategies to addressable TV to get more mileage from their advertising budget. We know that not everyone who watches the local news has plans to visit a high-end furniture store. But service providers are tracking consumers with an internet connection, and information on what they watch and the sites they visit are built into profiles. Marketers can use these profiles to show ads to local market households that have shown intent to purchase furniture.
Similarly, marketers aggressively encourage consumers to sign up for loyalty programs and capture email addresses. With this information, commonly called first-party data, your clients can update their email marketing strategy by generating personalized promotions based on consumers’ past purchasing history.
You can also help your clients get better ROI by using contextual advertising. These paid ads will display online based on how you select topics and sub-categories in the Google Display Network, for example. If your client is selling cookware, set up the ad campaign so that consumers searching for recipes or kitchen gifts will appear on websites or blogs that discuss cooking or trends in kitchen items.
Don’t forget that social media can help your clients reach local consumers. SOCi reports that “75% of consumers say they’ve discovered a new local offering based on recommendations and posts on social media.” So, put together a social media marketing strategy to help clients reach consumers looking for what they are selling.
Reach Target Audiences with Relevant Advertising
Consumers can be unforgiving when a marketer crosses the line with messaging. When consumers are bombarded with messaging about a product inappropriate for their demographic group, they get frustrated and annoyed. They might even avoid the brand when they're shopping.
That’s the last position your clients want to be in. Help them target their messaging to the right audience by reviewing the AudienceSCAN profiles available on AdMall by SalesFuel. Only then can they reach their target markets using marketing strategies that are actually effective.