Understanding your website visitors quickly is crucial for identifying their needs and winning their business. Given that you typically have only one chance to target them before they leave your site, it’s essential to make every interaction count. By learning as much as possible about visitors, you can provide them with what they are looking for and increase your chances of converting them into customers.
It’s a well-known fact that 98% of website visitors leave without making a purchase. This article will show you how to drastically reduce this number. By effectively using audience targeting, you can display your ads to the right buyers, cut advertising costs, and improve conversion rates.
What is Audience Targeting?
Audience targeting involves filtering or segmenting the available audience to be highly specific. By limiting who sees your advertisements, you can minimize advertising spend and maximize return on investment (ROI). Every advertising platform offers various filters for selecting your audience, and the effectiveness of these filters depends on the platform and the size of the audience you can reach once your filters are applied. For instance, Facebook has over 2 billion users.
Here are the most common ways to target your audience:
1. Target by Location
Location targeting has become increasingly precise, allowing you to target users by country, region, and even neighborhood. The precision of location targeting can depend on the country’s privacy laws. For example, some countries like Germany have stricter privacy laws that limit geographic targeting.
With the rise of mobile-first advertising, the importance of location targeting has grown. For example, you can target people near a specific store with real-time ads for sales or time-limited discounts.
2. Target by Demographics
Advertising platforms store vast amounts of data that enable targeting by various demographics, such as sex, age, education, and even income. This allows you to eliminate irrelevant people from your paid advertising. For instance, targeting women for women-related products helps you exclude those who are unlikely to be interested in your product.
3. Target by Interest
Targeting by interest involves showing ads to users based on their interests. While Google has renamed “interest-based advertising” to “personalized advertising,” the principle remains the same. Targeting by interest addresses what the customer wants, making it a powerful method of audience targeting.
4. Target by Behavior
Behavioral targeting involves tracking user actions to understand their intentions and readiness to buy. By combining data such as device used, videos watched, content read, or customer support questions asked, you can build a picture of who the users are and what they want. This approach uses first-party data (data gathered from your website) and third-party data to create a more personalized experience.
5. Target by On-Site Messaging or Re-Messaging
On-site retargeting involves using real-time technology to trigger personalized messages based on user actions on your site. These messages aim to move users towards the next stage of the conversion funnel, ultimately leading to a purchase. A/B testing each message ensures the highest conversion rates.
Conclusion
Audience targeting should start on-site before moving to paid advertising. By implementing an on-site retargeting strategy, you can optimize your Google Ads or social media advertising effectively, ensuring you are not wasting money. Follow these steps to optimize your on-site retargeting strategy:
- Identify Customer Types (Personas): Understand who your customers are.
- Generate a Journey Map for Each Persona: Outline the steps each persona takes from visiting your site to making a purchase.
- Build a Content Plan Around Each Persona: Create content tailored to each persona’s needs.
- Build a Conversion Funnel from Your Journey Maps and Content: Guide visitors through the buying process.
- Personalize Each Persona’s Journey with Messages and Offers: Use A/B testing to refine your approach.
This process should be ongoing and integrated into your overall marketing strategy, including organic traffic and search engine marketing (SEM). Remember, on-site retargeting should precede any form of paid advertising. By personalizing the user experience and optimizing each step, you can increase conversions and maximize ROI.
