What is Targeting: Definition and Video (2024)

Targeting is an advertising mechanism, that allows you to segment some visitors, who meet a defined set of criteria, from the general audience. It helps increase the effectivity of the campaign. Targeting is also used in email marketing for segmentation. Find out more.

This video made by tutor2u considers three marketing strategies along with its benefits and explains the way to combine them effectively.

Why is targeting important?

Without a proper targeting strategy, your product promotion is doomed to failure. To sell successfully, firstly you need to know who you're selling to, and then pick up the most relevant strategies and techniques for each segment.

With an effective plan, you’ll be able to reach the following goals.

• Attract quality leads.Only target leads who are most likely to be interested in your product. This way, you won’t spend extra money and effort on advertising to big audiences.
• Stay competitive. The more accurately you target, the more competitors you leave behind. Clients always choose brands that provide relevant offers.
• Improve your service and products. To develop an effective targeting strategy, you need to deeply analyze your audience. You’ll get to know your clients’ needs and wants. This information will help you improve your product and service.

What’s the difference between segmentation, targeting, and positioning?

These three elements play an important role in promoting a new product. You can’t escape any of them since an effective marketing strategy implies using each one step by step.

Segmentation comes first. It refers to the process of dividing your entire audience into smaller groups called segments. They are made up of people whose needs and interests are similar. They respond differently to your campaigns. Without a proper segmentation strategy, you won’t be able to enter the next stage successfully.

The second stage is called targeting. Now that you have your audience segmented, you start developing the strategy and the tactics that will help you communicate with people more effectively. Analyze each segment, create a buyer persona for each, and then work on designing the best promotions for each group. This way, you target different segments of your audience using the most relevant techniques.

The last stage is positioning. This stage is extremely important since its success predetermines your place in the market. Your task here is to persuade your potential clients that your brand is the best choice. You should create an image of your company in your customers’ minds. Educate them about the benefits of using your product and do your best to be associated with a particular need. One of the brands that managed to do this successfully is co*ke as far as almost every person thinks of this manufacturer when talking about soda.

Targeting mechanism

1. The audience is monitored during the information gathering stage. At this stage of targeting, a marketer monitors consumers' tastes, finds out which stores they visit, what actions they carry out on the Internet, what the users are interested in, etc.
2. The information analysis stage allows you to conclude the preferences of your target audience, their tastes,methods of communication, and their purchasing behavior from a significant amount of data gathered from a large number of users. Accordingly, you should focus your marketing efforts on the people who are most likely to engage with your brand based on the information that you gained from your analyses.
3. Inthe next stage, it is possible to present an information message, a product, a service profitably for the target audience. After the audience is determined, an advertising and information message should be created.
4. Advertising is placed only on those information resources that are visited by a potential audience (specific sites, pages, sections of stores, departments of the stores, television broadcasts that are most relevant to your target audience).

Targeting Types

• Theme-based targeting. Advertising and information messages demonstration according to a particular topic.
• Contextual targeting. Message demonstrations according to users’ interests.
• Geotargeting. Advertising demonstrationbased onthe geographical location of your target audience
• Behavioral targeting.This is oneof the most promising types of targeting. The essence of behavioral targeting is introducing a mechanism to collect information about users’ actions: routes of travel, favorite places to visits, shopping behaviors, etc.
• Sociodemographic targeting. This is a concentration based on age, gender, income, social status, etc.

Targeted Email Marketing

Marketers use targeting to craft relevant and personalized email campaigns. This mechanism lets you divide your mailing list into small segments with shared interests and offer them different goods and content. By doing this, you'll get a higher ROI and ensure customer retention.

After the registration in SendPulse, you can group your clients by their rating, age, location, occupation, gender, and based on their actions — the way they interact with your emails. We provide ready-to-use segments available for free.

If your client base is less than 500 subscribers, try segmentation within the free pricing plan. Send up to 15,000 emails absolutely for free to 500 subscribers monthly.

References

1. The article "The Importance of Targeting in Marketing (And How to Include It in Your Strategy)" on Alexa's blog covers the term of targeting in marketing. It explains why it is so vital, provides tips on how to get started, identify market opportunities, and use target marketing to improve your strategy.
2. The article "The segmentation, targeting, and positioning model" on Smart Insights explains how to apply these three strategies to digital communications.
3. The article "Target Marketing and Market Segmentation" on The Balance Small Business defines target marketing, explains how it works in combination with segmentation and offers McDonald's case study to examine.
4. The article "10 Targeting Opportunities Most Marketers Are Missing Out On" on HubSpot considers targeting opportunities in email marketing, social media, paid media, and a website.

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Last Updated: 06.12.2023