How to Reach All Audiences with Targeted Advertising

Let’s dive into how, through a strategic multiscreen plan, you can master targeted advertising, stay true to your brand, and make sure your ads reach all the right people without trying to reach everyone.

Understand Your Audience

To reach your audiences, you must first dive into your first-party data to uncover who they are, what they need, and where they spend their time. While age, location, and income are important, you should additionally think more about how they currently interact with your brand — both online and physically. Additional questions to ask yourself include: What are their interests? What do they click on? Where do they hang out online?

After digging into the data, our media experts can help you create profiles based on shared traits such as demographics, behavior, and psychographics, giving you a clearer picture of their needs and preferences.

Leverage Lookalike Audiences

Once you understand your main audience, it’s time to think about how to reach new customers. With lookalike audiences, we can help you reach people who share similar characteristics with your existing customers or main audience segments. This expands your reach to new users likely to be interested in your products or services.

Customized Multiscreen Plans

Imagine giving your grandma, boss, and significant other the same birthday card. That would be pretty weird, right? But that can be what it’s like running the same ad for every audience.

Every advertising platform has unique benefits, and each audience segment has its own interests and preferences.

• Millennials binge memes and enjoy nostalgia; 79% say streaming is their default source for viewing TV. We can help your business lean into that.
• Adults 65+ love a good deal, and over half subscribe to cable. Reach them with special savings on the screen they spend the most time on.
• Gen Z consumes bite-sized, authentic content and loves social media. Maybe it’s time to hop on trends and boost your social media advertising budget.

By focusing on specific audience groups and crafting tailored messages that resonate with those unique interests and preferences, you can connect in a personal, relevant, and meaningful way and see better results through your advertising.

Time for Advanced Targeting

People love feeling seen and understood. By using precision targeting tactics, we can help you pinpoint and connect with your customers like a pro.

• We’ve already talked about how audience data helps you dig into age, interests, behaviors, and beyond and helps you truly understand who your customers are. Armed with this intelligence, we can help serve ads that feel like they were made for them — because they basically were.
• Do you already have a list of your most loyal customers? CRM list matching lets you serve ads specifically to them. This personal and friendly targeting tactic is perfect for reengaging existing customers and keeping relationships strong.
• Location targeting is like setting up your business exactly where your audience hangs out. Whether it’s a city, a neighborhood, or even a specific block, you can zero in on your ideal audience in real time. Add geofencing, and you’re serving ads to people within a virtual “fence” around your chosen location. Location targeting is a must for local physical businesses, event promotions, or catching people while on the go.
• Category contextual targeting puts your ads in content that’s just right for your audience. For example, a running shop on fitness blogs or a gourmet coffee company on complementary foodie websites. Category contextual targeting is a natural pairing that makes your brand feel like it belongs.
• Ever browse a website, leave without buying, and suddenly see ads for that product everywhere? That’s site and device retargeting at work. It’s the friendly nudge of re-engaging potential customers who need encouragement to take the next step.

Each targeting method works wonders individually, but the magic happens when you combine them. By layering these tactics, you create a campaign that’s not just smart -- it’s unstoppable.

The winning combination

If you, as a business owner, aim to target “all audiences,” you may be spreading your efforts too thin, making your ad dollars less effective and less impactful.

In a world where consumers expect personalized experiences, targeted advertising is the best way to deliver the right message to the right people at the right time. By embracing this approach, you can ensure that your brand stands out in the crowded digital landscape, reaching and resonating with all audiences in a way that truly matters.

The good news is that at Optimum Media, we specialize in helping you reach and connect to the audiences you care about -- and perhaps new ones you’ve never considered through strategic multiscreen advertising campaigns.

Posted at MediaVillage through the Thought Leadership self-publishing platform.

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