THE SECRET TO HIGH-PERFORMING DIGITAL CAMPAIGNS A Guide to Audience Targeting

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1 THE SECRET TO HIGH-PERFORMING DIGITAL CAMPAIGNS A Guide to Audience Targeting Oregonian Media Group 2015 For more information: OregonianMediaGroup.com advertise@oregonian.com

2 IN THIS REPORT A lot of factors can influence the success of your digital advertising: the images you use, your call to action, the placement on the page. But none of those can save a campaign if the right audience isn t seeing it. Well-targeted ads make it easier to reach your best prospects and most valuable customers, wherever they are online. Smart targeting can turn around an underperforming campaign, while generating a higher ROI for every dollar invested. This report provides an easy-to-follow introduction to Audience Targeting and explains how your business can use it most effectively. It s the perfect primer for any marketer, media planner or C-Suite executive who wants to achieve more with their digital campaigns. CONTENTS 2 Audience Targeting: A Definition 4 How Audience Targeting Works 6 3 Steps to Building a Targeted Campaign 9 About Oregonian Media Group 1

3 AUDIENCE TARGETING: A DEFINITION At some point in your life, you ve probably played the game 20 Questions. If not, it goes something like this: one person thinks of an object, but doesn t tell anyone else what it is. You have to figure it out by asking yes or no questions, and you only get 20 chances. For example: Is it blue? Can I carry it on my back? Will it explode if I put it in the microwave? The more detailed and creative your questions, the greater chance you have of guessing correctly before your 20 questions run out. Finding a likely customer online is a lot like playing 20 questions. You have limited time and resources, and a million possibilities, but you have to reach the particular audience that has a need for your products or services. If you re selling deck installations, your questions might sound like this: Are you interested in home improvement? How often do you shop online? Are you planning on building a backyard deck this year? And that, in a nutshell, is Audience Targeting. With Audience Targeting, this kind of filtering helps determine who will see your digital ads and it happens in a blink. How you target your message depends on your product or service, your ideal audience and your goals, and there are countless ways to segment an audience. Let s quickly review a few of the big ones. FINDING A CUSTOMER ONLINE IS A LOT LIKE PLAYING 20 QUESTIONS. Target by Interests If you know what topics interest your audience, it makes sense to place ads next to similar content online. On large sites, that can be literally hundreds of site sections and pages on a range of topics. Unfortunately, this is the point where many businesses stop. Just buying loads of impressions in targeted content is like asking three of your 20 questions and giving up. 2

4 Target by Behavior Most websites capture a wealth of data about actions people take while they re poking around like pages visited, videos watched or devices used. When you combine that information with third-party data (reliable data from an outside source), a clearer picture of your audience starts to take shape. From there you can segment your audience based on those past behaviors. You can pinpoint the behaviors that are important to you, and then serve your ads to only those visitors. 80% OF ADVERTISERS USE AUDIENCE TARGETING And find it to be an effective marketing strategy. In fact, 7 in 10 advertisers plan to increase their audience-targeting budgets by an average of 38%. exelate / Digiday, State of the Industry survey, March Target by Demographics The term demographics refers to statistical information about a particular group of people: age, sex, education, income, employment status and more. Demographic marketing is nothing new, but in the age of Big Data more information is available than ever before. You ll need to zero in on the data that best represents your target audience. For instance, you probably wouldn t market baby shoes to Baby Boomers. Target by Location Location, location, location. For smaller local businesses, especially, targeting the right location is critical. A tree-trimming service in downtown Portland, Oregon shouldn t waste its budget on homeowners in sunny Reno. And in the mobile age, it s increasingly important for every business to reach audiences wherever they are. With geo-targeting, you can serve specific mobile ads based on a person s location 50% off coffee inside, sale happening here in real-time. 3

5 Target with Re-messaging Technology has made it possible to see where consumers have been online and what they ve clicked. If that sounds creepy, don t worry that data is anonymous. You can see what s happening, not the specific person who s doing it. But it does allow you to do something smart called re-messaging. When someone visits your website or sees your ad, you can show that person another message later, in a different location or on another site, to stay top of mind. You don t have to do this all yourself, of course. There are professionals who can help match your goals to the right content, the right data and the right ad networks. Next, we ll look at how Audience Targeting makes all this happen. HOW AUDIENCE TARGETING WORKS The better you understand audience targeting and your audience the more creative you can be in reaching them. And the better you can evaluate what s working and why. Audience targeting has two basic parts: first-party data and third-party data. First-Party Data First-party data is any information a company can capture about their customers interests and behaviors, often using cookies. That might include: The web pages they visit most How long they spent reading a page Content they ve shared or commented on Site features they use Ads they ve clicked on (or even looked at) How long they stayed on a site What mobile device they use How they interact with your apps Content they download Contact information they ve shared Products purchased, and more It works like this: Great content attracts lots of visitors. More visitors produce more data. More data means more insights you can use to reach your audience with your targeted marketing and advertising messages. 4

6 Third-Party Data Third-party data is information that is licensed or purchased from a reputable outside source one that doesn t have a relationship with your customers. That could be: Demographic information on a wide range of audiences Data on consumers behaviors and interests Purchase history from retailers Ready-made audience segments The key word here is: reputable (like Nielsen or comscore, for example). In other words, companies that have processes in place to validate the accuracy of data. GREAT CONTENT ATTRACTS VISITORS. VISITORS PRODUCE DATA. MORE DATA MEANS MORE INSIGHTS. 5

7 How They Work Together Long before first-party data was widely available, direct marketers were using third-party data with some great results. Today, businesses tend to prefer firstparty data it s timely and reliable. But these two really need each other to perform their best. Nothing gives you a closer look at how customers interact with you now than fresh first-party data. Yet that view can also be too narrow. For instance: What are they doing away from your site, and what does that say about them? What if you want to reach new and different audiences? Enter third-party data. Besides giving you a more nuanced view of customers and their motivations, it helps identify markets you haven t tapped yet. Put these two in a room, and watch the sparks fly. Now that you ve had a peek behind the curtain, we ll talk about how to reach your best customers. 3 STEPS TO BUILDING A TARGETED CAMPAIGN Audience targeting can open plenty of doors, once you know what it is and how it works. The question is whether you re opening the right doors, enough of them, or too many to execute a successful campaign. While there s no single strategy that works for every campaign (every advertiser and goal is different), the following three steps provide reliable, consistent results for most. 1. Start with Geography Location should be your first consideration. Geo-targeting is obviously important for budgeting limited ad dollars: you want to spend where your customers are (or are most likely to be). It s important to do it first because it s the quickest and easiest way to narrow your potential audience. When targeting by geography, there are two basic approaches: IP address targeting, which targets the current ZIP code of a particular device Geo-content targeting, which targets the geography a user most often reads about A person who lives in Beaverton, Oregon and works in Portland may fall under both geo-audiences, and it s appropriate to target using both methods. In fact, the best approach is usually to combine the two. That way, you ll find your target audience at work, at home and at play on whatever device they re using to connect to the internet. 6

8 2. Next, Target by Behavior & Interests What is the audience s intent? What are they interested in? This factor will always trump more generic demographics when it comes to zeroing in on the right audience. The real power of behavior and interest targeting lies in how people use the internet. We don t give up much information about who we are (demographics) as we browse the web but the sites we visit, the ads we click and the content we consume speak volumes about what we re interested in and what we re shopping for right now. For example, let s say you re selling a luxury sedan. It s good to know how many in your audience are financially able to afford it (demographic targeting). It s better to know which ones have recently read about the latest Lexus and searched for the Audi A6 in auto listings (the behavioral targeting method). 3. Last, Filter with Demographics This is where you can further shape your audience, if needed. You ve found an interested group in the right location, but your aim could still be too wide of the mark. Or there may be too many members in the audience to effectively reach them all. At this point, targeting by demographics like gender or income can help fine-tune your focus. Many in the audience, no matter how interested, will simply lack the means to make a purchase. Maybe certain demographic segments haven t historically shown a tendency to buy. All good things to know so that you only target impressions to those that are most likely to want your product or service. This isn t a foolproof formula no formula ever is. Like all marketing and advertising, you should take three more steps: test, measure and adjust. 7

9 TO FIND THE RIGHT AUDIENCE ONLINE, YOU N E E D T H E RIG HT S U PPOR T OFFLINE. BREAK THROUGH OregonianMediaGroup.com SEARCH DISPLAY MOBILE SOCIAL CONTENT

10 ABOUT OREGONIAN MEDIA GROUP As the region s leading media group, we help businesses reach the right audience wherever they are through digital, print, search, social and content marketing. Our certified experts provide strategic, creative and technical support at every step to help advertisers develop the most effective campaigns possible. Oregonian Media Group publishes OregonLive.com, the leading news and information website in Oregon and Southwest Washington, and The Oregonian, the Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper. For more information: Visit OregonianMediaGroup.com Call advertise@oregonian.com 9

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