Everyone has limited attention. Marketers have tight budgets. Customers are inundated with messages on a daily basis. When one acts – whether it’s a click, a download, or an email – it’s purposeful and with intent, and the companies who continually show up to give them the next bit of information they seek will always be easier to recall. So how can you continue to stay in front of the right people? Make them part of your audience strategy and use audience layering!
What does audience layering mean?
Once you establish your message, think about campaign targeting as a recipe – who do you want to see your ads? Who do you want to engage? Who will be part of the mix? Audience strategy is important so you don’t blow the budget and spray your message to the masses. It’s critical to narrow in on the right people. Audience layering gives you that opportunity – to build upon those who are actively interested. The goal is to increase activity at a lower cost since we are in front of the right audiences.
Depending on the channel, potential audiences to layer include:
- A customer list
- A customer lookalike list
- Customers who visited your website based on tags or pixels
- Those who visited competitor websites
- Users who watched competitor videos
- Those who previously engaged with one of your campaigns
- Company app users or competitor app users
- Target keywords
Spending time thinking through audience strategy will only help to improve your campaign results in the end. For example, when comparing two Google display campaigns with equal budgets over the same time period, the campaign audiences with more concise targeting (layers!) had almost 40% more impressions. The proof is definitely in the numbers. Are you ready for your next campaign?
