Like a Searchlight Through the Gloom – Focus on the Clicks that Actually Mean Something
In the age of digital marketing, awareness is easy to measure. So, reach and engagement get measured – at great length and in great detail. That data might give your agency ‘results’ they can report in pretty charts and graphs, but what does it really tell you? And what is ‘reach’ worth to your bottom line?
If you’re selling impulse purchases to consumers, reach is meaningful. Consumer brands grow by extending their reach and imprinting their brand into the minds of buyers with distinctive adverts and assets.
But you might be selling higher value services and products to businesses, where the lead time is measured in months rather than seconds. You might be looking for a long-term business relationship rather than a one-off sale.
Out of your potential market less than 5% is likely to be actively considering a purchase at any time. How do you direct your marketing efforts at those people? And how can you hope to help them through the buying process from awareness to conversion if all you have is a mass of superficial data about reach?
The answer: go beyond simplistic metrics and understand intent based targeting.
How Targeting Intent Delivers Results
Before we go any further, here’s an example of how focusing on meaningful data and intent delivers results.
A campaign we started for a client in August 2019 achieved a reach of over 400,000 by the middle of December – impressive, you might think. Out of the mass of all that ‘reach’, we were interested in the 3,100 who had given us their details in exchange for information. And of these, 22 prospects demonstrated a genuine interest by engaging with the content, the website and with emails.
These 22 prospects led to £66m of proposals being progressed from a standing start in August – and the first £2m project already confirmed, with 5 others pending! The ROI is somewhere off the scale.
Intent-Based Targeting
Intent-based targeting involves targeting a customer based on the sites and pages they visit, the keywords they search and what content they read online. It focuses on the need they are seeking information on to resolve – not just the organisation.
Responsive engagement software provides you with that information, so you can further develop the relationship and provide each prospect with content that resonates with them most – hence, targeting them with intent. You are no longer trying to make sense of the 400,000, you are responding and engaging directly to the 3,500 who matter most.
Underlying all of this is a forensic understanding of the market. This feeds into marketing content built around clear value propositions and outcomes. This, in turn, offers an insight into the intent of somebody who accesses related content.
Follow-up emails and content can then be made relevant so they don’t seem intrusive. And you can judge the right time to make personal contact to take the relationship further.
Wide audience targeting doesn’t focus on intent. Often, a broad message is communicated with the hope that someone responds. Hope, as somebody once said, is not a strategy.
Direct Your Budget at What Works
The aim of intent-based targeting is to communicate a better, more accurate message to a smaller audience. This reduces costs on advertising and improves conversion rates. It also saves you tying yourself in knots trying to work out how to attribute sales to particular channels, campaigns or clicks.
If you’re drowning in data about reach and ‘engagement’ and seeing minimal impact on sales, maybe it’s time to be more systematic in your approach. Intent-based targeting shines a searchlight through the gloom to help you pick your targets with complete clarity.
To find out more about the topics discussed in this article, please contact us today on 01823 429339 or email info@accessperformance.co.uk.
