What is Target Advertising?
Your target market is the segment of the population that's most likely to purchase your business's product or service. If you're like most businesses you tailor your products and services towards a specific target audience. And you use targeted marketing to reach your target audience and promote your business.
Target marketing has two goals. The first is to convince the potential customers in your target market to try your brand. The other is to maintain your existing customer base.
Target marketers use to target advertising to achieve these goals. In the past, marketers relied on radio and magazines rather than newspapers or television to reach a target audience. Today's digital marketing tools, especially social media, are allowing businesses to zero in on their target audience like never before.
This type of marketing is called targeted advertising. Targeted advertising appears in specific media that research shows are consumed by the target market. Its message is specifically designed to appeal to the targeted audience.
While it may seem tempting to go for a mass marketing "everyone's a customer" approach. This could be a mistake - not everyone is interested in your product. Marketing resources could be wasted trying to appeal to those who will never make a purchase.
How Businesses Use Targeted Advertising: Businesses use target marketing to reach their potential and existing customer base.
Targeted advertising is effective for restaurants and others businesses going after a niche market.
How Businesses Use Targeted Advertising
Before a business can begin target advertising, they have to have a target to aim at. This target is referred to as a target market or target consumers. In order to hit the mark, a business needs to know who its target audience is.
A business' target market consists of the individuals most likely to buy their products or services. A target market is usually segmented according to demographic data, such as age, income, sex, education level, etc. Target markets can also be segmented by geography, behavioral patterns, and psychographics (values, personality, lifestyle, attitudes, etc.).
Analyzing the browsing habits of a target market also helps businesses when it comes to advertising. They study their target audience's recent online purchases, browsing history, purchasing history, and search engine queries to name a few. This helps businesses know when and where to place their target ads.
Businesses use this information about their target consumers to more effectively utilize their marketing resources. They can focus only on the individuals within their target market. This makes it easier to convert their leads into customers.
Digital media have transformed target marketing into an art form. Businesses now use personal information and other data to create hyper-targeted ads. More and more, digital media ads target a very specific part of a target market.
Examples of Targeted Advertising
Targeted advertising has been around for a long time. Before the Internet, businesses used billboards and magazine print ads to reach a target audience. Today, businesses are focusing their efforts to engage with their target audience in the digital world.
Cookies
It's no coincidence that you see an ad you looked at on one site being displayed on another. Marketers are following you around using small blocks of data called cookies. These cookies contain information about your browsing history.
When you view a product on a website, your browser reports this data to a third-party media company. This information is stored on your server as a browser cookie. When you visit another site serviced by the same company, you'll be seeing ads from the first website.
Social Media Ads
Facebook and other social media platforms often place targeted ads on the sides of your feed, The ads you see are based on your "likes" and those of your friends.
Search Engine Ads
Search engine ad campaigns use targeted advertising to display ads based on your browsing history. For instance, if you search for "local restaurants," you'll see ads for local restaurants appear on your SERPs.
Targeted Advertising- Some Takeaways
- Target marketing relies on targeted advertising to reach a specific target market.
- Targeted advertising can take many forms and appear in many media.
- Digital marketing and social media marketing give businesses the means to target their customer base like never before.