Having a broad, undefined target audience is one of the biggest mistakes brands make when advertising online. Generic targeting results in low relevance, high costs, and poor conversions.
But meticulously segmenting your audience opens up game-changing opportunities to deliver hyper-relevant messaging and offers at scale.
In this post, we’ll explore 10 creative segmentation strategies you can use to take your ad targeting to the next level.
The Problem: Targeting Everyone Means Targeting No One
Many brands fall into the trap of trying to appeal to the widest possible audience. This shotgun approach wastes budget on the wrong people and dilutes your messaging.
Some common issues with generic targeting:
- Low relevance – Broad targeting shows your ads to many people who will never convert. This tanks relevance.
- High cost per conversion – With such low relevance, you have to pay more to get conversions. This cripples ROI.
- Brand dilution – Appealing to everyone waters down your brand message. You end up as generic and forgettable.
- Poor UX – When you try to appeal to everyone, you don’t properly speak to anyone. This creates a disjointed user experience.
Laser-focused targeting is essential for efficient ad spend and powerful messaging that resonates.
The Solution: Get Creative with Granular Audience Segmentation
Carving your audience into highly-specific segments allows you to tailor messaging, offers, creative, and landing pages to match each group’s unique needs, interests, and motivations.
Here are 10 creative ways tosegment your audience for killer ad targeting:
1. Demographics
Age, gender, income, education level, occupation, and other demographic factors often correlate with interest in your products. Create segments based on key demographics meaningful to your brand.
2. Interests & Habits
Categorize audiences based on interests relevant to your business like sports, fashion, gardening, etc. Identify their habits – where they hang out, what they read, listen to, and watch. Cater messaging accordingly.
3. Purchase Intent
Group prospects by their stage in the purchase process – those in research mode vs. ready to buy. Speak to each group appropriately. Remind tire-kickers why they need you. Give final nudges to ready buyers.
4. Objections & Pain Points
People hesitate to buy for different reasons. Create segments addressing distinct objections like price, credibility, changing habits, etc. Position your brand as the antidote.
5. Product/Category Usage
Heavy users need different messaging than light users. Group customers accordingly. Upsell heavy users on premium offerings. Get light users to dip their toes in the water.
6. Loyalty & Engagement
Divide audiences by engagement level – subscribed to your email list, follow you on social, purchased before vs. completely cold. Tailor messaging and offers to each group.
7. Location
Geographic factors like city size, urban vs. rural, regional values, climate, etc. impact appeal. Adapt messaging to location-based nuances.
8. Psychographics
Personalities like conservative vs adventurous, intellectual vs practical, introvert vs extrovert resonate with different messaging styles and calls-to-action.
9. Values & Beliefs
Align messaging to values like individualism, humanitarianism, materialism, risk aversion. Avoid disconnects between beliefs and your brand values.
10. Hybrid Segmentation
Combine 2-3 segmentation models for highly-targeted groups. Ex. High-income + low engagement. Urban + adventurous psychographic. The permutations are endless.
Dial in Your Targeting for Maximum Impact
With so many powerful ways to slice and dice your audience, there’s no reason for ineffective spray-and-pray marketing.
Avoid the temptation to generically target everyone. Take the time to get intimately familiar with your varying audience segments. Map specific messaging and offers tailored to each one.
Setup conversion tracking so you can see what’s resonating best with each segment. Continually optimize and refine based on performance data.
When you know exactly who you’re speaking to, you can craft messaging that really hits home. Hyper-targeted campaigns convert better, build stronger customer relationships, and make advertising spend go further.
Get creative with your audience segmentation and watch your ads gain traction. It’s amazing what you can achieve when you intimately understand your audience. Targeting is the key that unlocks your ad potential.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are the main benefits of audience segmentation?
More relevant messaging, higher conversions, lower CPA, stronger brand positioning, better customer experiences, and more effective advertising overall.
How many segments should I target?
3-5 core segments per campaign is a good starting point. You can expand from there but avoid going overboard. Overly complex segmentation causes fragmentation.
How should I prioritize budget across segments?
Allocate more budget to your high-performing and high-lifetime-value segments. But maintain sufficient budget for testing new targeting approaches.
How often should I reevaluate my segmentation?
Audit your audience segments every 6 months. Look for changes in performance, engagement, and preferences. Adjust segments and targeting accordingly.
What data should I use to define segments?
Leverage engagement data, conversion metrics, customer profiles, psychographic research, surveys, and past ad performance by segment. Derived insights from multiple sources.
Carefully carving your audience into highly-relevant segments makes your ad budget work much harder. Avoid shotgun targeting and instead use precision segmentation to spark powerful connections with your ideal customers.
