As media fragments and audiences become more segmented, online audience targeting is becoming ever-more important tool for marketing campaigns. Stuart Colman, Managing Director, Europe of AudienceScience, offers a guide to reaching the right consumers online.
1. Target audiences, not websites.
People buy products not websites. Still too many media strategies revolve around buying content or environment and it’ easy to get caught up in the ‘where’ and ‘how’ of targeting while ignoring the all-important ‘who’. Step away from online technology for a moment and start thinking of your marketplace as individual people, unique in their online behavior with distinct motivations to buy.
2. Accurately define your target audience?
The online digital environment offers the potential to really define your audience and reach them in real time so use it to build a real understanding of who your online customers are. By focusing on their online behaviour, for example; what they read, where they go, searches they make, and combining this with offline data, registration data or other third party you can quickly build real insight and understand intent to directly support your online targeting.
3. Are you really reaching the audience you want to target?
Sounds obvious but digital targeting technology is often packaged up as a ‘black box’ solution with a pretty front and back-end and very little clarity about what goes on in the middle. The data that drives a system and the methodology used to create targeting segments is crucial and ultimately differentiates one product from the next. However, is it really helping you target the audience you know you want to reach or is your audience being ‘defined’ by others based on their interpretation of your requirements? Make sure you push your solution provider to show how the targeting has been driven.
4. Check you are legally allowed to use the data
This is so often overlooked and can inadvertently put you at risk of breaking the law. As a data user, (even if you didn’t collect it) you have a level of responsibility to ensure that all the personal data employed to deliver a targeted online campaign has been gathered correctly and in line with the law. The UK is pushing for greater self-regulation when it comes to online advertising and the IAB’s best practice guidelines are an increasingly important code of conduct for the whole industry (http://www.youronlinechoices.com/). Make sure the companies you use comply with these.
5. Is it past its shelf life?
Online data has a short-shelf life and the dynamic nature of search and browsing behavior may only have relevance for a few short weeks (or even less). Always check with your solution provider that the data they use is recent and relevant and confirm how they know this.
6. Know what you are buying
‘Targeting’ is a broad church and the suite of online targeting options available is extensive and one of the key drivers for the growth in online display. Demographic, retargeting, behavioural, contextual, transactional, predictive, geographical audience….: they all have a role and they represent different levels of sophistication and precision. Make sure that the ‘targeting’ you are selecting is right for your needs and you know what you’re buying.
7. Don’t chase clicks
Online may be the ultimate metric-driven medium but while the ‘click’ used to be seen as the be-all and end-all for campaign success this is no longer the case. Research has shown people who regularly click are often less affluent and of little value to advertisers. The industry is beginning to realise that what’s more important is branding exposure and online advertising has a real impact on behaviour, even if not apparent by an immediate click-through. Audience targeting should be approached as a branded buy, not a performance one.
It’s only by looking at the total impact of display advertising that marketers can really understand its contribution to campaign success and brand affinity.
8. Test drive lots of ideas
The beauty of online advertising is that it allows you to see how each campaign is performing in real-time, and to try different combinations of targeting and creative while the campaign is still live. This is where targeting really comes into its own and as an advertiser you should be looking to ‘jump in the driving seat’ and optimise the performance of a campaign throughout its schedule by adjusting your targeting and creatives to drive the most effective campaigns.
By Stuart Colman
Managing Director, Europe
AudienceScience
www.AudienceScience.com
