Top Tips For Identifying and Targeting Ideal Audience Segments

By Jennifer Choo

KEY TAKEAWAY

Modern marketing teams are all implementing strategies to identify and target their ideal audiences. The challenge they currently face is how best to pivot their strategies to meet the demands of the impending endemic market we are living in. But what are the best ways to optimize your audience identification and targeting strategies in this modern marketing landscape?

Top of mind amidst the chatter of the demise of the third–party cookie is identifying and targeting ideal audience segments. This is not a new notion by any means, but it is a priority as teams continue to evolve their strategies in the wake of a global pandemic, consumer demand for transparency, and ever–changing compliance guidelines.

Changes within the marketing industry have come hard and fast over the past year and a half, and savvy marketing teams are rising to the challenge. Many are working to pivot their strategies to meet the market where it stands today along with where it’s going. At the heart of those strategies is a winning customer identification and targeting strategy.

As part of the typical marketing strategy for decades, audience segmentation and targeting have become the crux of every marketing campaign. But what are the best ways to optimize your audience identification and targeting strategies in this modern marketing landscape?

Know Your Audiences/Customers

No marketing team can build a strategy without first understanding their ideal target audience. That is where building buyer personas comes into play — a task best completed by leveraging data from existing customers and users. Profiles of ideal clients and audiences segments must be fully built out in detail for teams to begin the process of building audiences and creating audience segments.

Once buyer personas are successfully created, teams must determine when and where to find these consumer groups in order to market to them. As ideal channels and mediums for reach are assessed, campaign messaging and materials should be created in a way that will appeal to your various target audience segments. It is critical for teams to fully understand where their customers frequent, what they are looking for, how will they look for it, and what their thought process is behind researching the product or service in question.

40% of consumers purchase more from retailers that provide a personalized shopping experience across channels. - RetailNext

As campaigns for these identified audience segments take shape, various strategies for personalization and engagement come into play. Savvy teams leverage tools like dynamic marketing creatives, kinetic emails, and interactive mobile apps to drive personalization for customers across a multitude of channels and mediums. Crafting resonant messaging that appeals to your ideal audiences is key to capturing their attention.

Utilize Multiple Channels

One crucial element to targeting ideal audiences is utilizing multiple channels and mediums for marketing campaigns. Leveraging methods like omnichannel and micro-moments to reach buyers where they are and when they need you is one of the most successful strategies marketing teams can employ.

Marketers using three or more channels in campaigns enjoy a purchase and engagement rate that is 250% higher than those using single-channel campaigns.

– Retail Dive

While multi–channel marketing is not a new concept for marketing teams, its rise from beneficial to necessary is. The nature of the modern consumer is one of instant gratification and continuous multitasking. To reach your ideal target audiences, you must determine where and when to best to engage them. Instituting a marketing strategy that involves multiple channels ensures marketers will reach consumers in a variety of ways that best appeal to them.

Leverage Intelligent Data

As the end of the third–party cookie draws near, many marketing teams are turning to first–party compliant data collection methodologies. In response, many of the leading tools and platforms in the marketing landscape have begun innovating to meet the demand, developing deeper insights into buyer–intent data and preferences.

Leveraging lookback windows and search preferences based on topics and products across sites gives industry giants like Amazon and ZoomInfo the ability to help their advertising clients reach highly targeted ideal audiences with a greater purchasing intent. This is an ideal audience targeting methodology for many marketing teams that are striving to reach their ideal consumers in the places where they already frequent.

In addition, many marketing teams are pivoting their data strategies in this new endemic world to meet consumer demand for more transparent marketing practices and ensure success as the reign of the first–party data sets in. This means optimizing their current data collection strategies and systems to better leverage their first–party data for customer engagement via personalization.

Follow the Trends

Marketers know that staying ahead of trends and leveraging them within their marketing strategies is the best way to target and engage customers successfully. Throughout the past 18 months, there has been an onslaught of engaging digital platforms taking hold across the consumer marketplace with those showcasing video at the helm.

Platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels are capturing the attention of users worldwide with original video and streaming content that they can connect with in more personal and authentic ways. Savvy marketing teams are taking advantage of these trends, building campaign strategies that incorporate these mediums with messaging that engages consumers at their level. But what does that mean exactly?

The key to leveraging these streaming and video apps and platforms goes back to understanding your target audience and their needs on a basic level. It’s not just about showing up in their feeds; it’s about delivering the types of content they are looking for — educational content from a trustworthy source on a personalized level. Marketing teams who are leveraging their customer data and buyer personas to understand the where, what, and when of their customer base and utilizing it across these trending channels will ensure success when it comes to customer targeting and engagement.

In Short

Modern marketing teams are all implementing strategies to identify and target their ideal audiences. The challenge they currently face is how best to pivot their strategies to meet the demands of the impending endemic market we are living in.

There are many things to take into account when building customer profiles and segmentation, especially in terms of transparency, compliance, and the rise of the first–party cookie as a primary consumer data source. Marketing teams must optimize their existing identification and targeting strategies to pivot with the rapid evolutions in the consumer market if they want to ensure success through customer engagement.

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