Since the advent of the internet, businesses have enjoyed myriad new ways to market themselves to the masses. Perhaps the most exciting of these is the ability to target adverts to different groups of people, depending on what you’re selling, what you’re trying to communicate, and what your typical customers tend to be interested in. This adds a new layer of effectiveness to all marketing campaigns, ensuring that relevant adverts are put in front of consumers whenever they’re surfing the web. Here’s how you’ll effectively target your marketing content online.

Your Customers

The first step on this journey is to think about what unites your typical customers. Are they young or old? Do they tend to shop up-market or down-market? Do they like fashion and popular music, or are they more interested in literature and current affairs? Answering these questions will help you understand the types of targeting techniques that’ll work for your business on Google, Facebook, and Instagram. Once you’ve decided upon your ideal customer, you’ll be ready to move onto the next stage of your targeting journey: segmenting audiences.

Segments

Social media companies and search engine providers are savvy at segmenting audiences based on what they like, what they tend to search for, and other factors. Behavioral segmentation examples show how it’s not just what people look at online that these sites monitor. They also monitor how long they tend to spend on different sites and what they do when they’re on them. Have a thorough search through all of these segment criteria to find some categories that you feel represent your ideal customer particularly well. Make a note of them, and come back to this stage once you’ve made your marketing content.

Content

You can target the content of your marketing material itself. For instance, if you’re selling products to luxury customers, then you’ll certainly want to make your marketing material classy and professional, with opulent touches of gold or royal blue. If you’re running a special offer on cheap products to thrifty consumers, something more eye-catching might be preferable. Make sure you’re thinking through exactly what your marketing content is communicating in order to stand the best chance of gaining attention from your target consumers when you do eventually publish your marketing materials.

A/B Testing

With your content created and your target audience defined, it’s time to publish your advert. You’ll set a figure for the amount of cash you’re willing to spend on your campaign, and it’ll begin targeting consumers immediately. This isn’t the end of your targeting journey, though. You’ll also need to conduct A/B testing in order to refine your advert, making it as popular as possible with the audience you’re targeting. Use the data on clicks and traffic you receive from your campaign to decide what’s working and what’s not, and keep testing versions of tweaked content against one another to eventually arrive at the most effective advert for what you’re selling.

These tips will be useful to any business that’s yet to indulge in the world of targeting online marketing – providing a handy overview of how the process can work for your business.