How Digital Targeting Can Help Find Your Next Customer
Your ads could be missing your next customer.
They may not have visited your website, called your business or completed a form yet. But they could already be leaving clues about what interests them.
Those clues can come from:
The streaming programs they watch
The online content they consume
The people already visiting your website
The interests and behaviors shared by your existing audience
Digital targeting for new customers can use those signals to answer an important question:
How can your business find and reach more of the right potential customers?
In this episode of Wheeler Digital Wise Guys, Cameron May and Fredy Wright explain two targeting options designed to reduce the guesswork: CTV Content Targeting and Website Retargeting Lookalike.
What Is CTV Content Targeting?
Connected TV advertising allows businesses to reach targeted audiences while they stream television programming on smart TVs and other connected devices.
Traditionally, much of the CTV targeting conversation has focused on the person watching. Advertisers might use interests, behaviors, geography and other audience signals to determine who should see a commercial.
CTV Content Targeting adds another consideration: what that person is watching.
Advertisers can align their streaming TV commercials with relevant programming categories, genres, networks and channels.
For example:
A home improvement company could align its commercials with renovation and home-design programming.
A furniture retailer could focus on home, lifestyle and interior-design content.
A sporting goods store could target sports and outdoor programming.
A financial advisor could consider business and financial content.
A travel destination could align its advertising with travel, food and adventure programming.
The exact programming and available inventory will vary. This targeting does not necessarily guarantee that a commercial will appear during one particular television show.
The strategy is about creating a more relevant connection between the advertisement and the content surrounding it.
Instead of asking only, “Who are we trying to reach?” advertisers can also ask:
“What are they watching?”
A kitchen-remodeling commercial appearing during home-renovation programming creates a natural connection. That same commercial appearing during completely unrelated content may not carry the same relevance.
For the right campaign, combining audience targeting with content context can create a more intentional Connected TV advertising strategy.
How Does Website Retargeting Work?
Most businesses are familiar with website retargeting.
Someone visits your website, leaves and later sees an advertisement encouraging them to return.
They look at one couch, and suddenly that couch seems to follow them around the internet.
Traditional website retargeting helps your business reconnect with someone who has already shown interest in what you sell. It can keep your business visible while that potential customer continues researching or deciding what to do next.
But what if your website traffic could also help you reach people who have never visited your website?
That is where Website Retargeting Lookalike comes in.
What Is Website Retargeting Lookalike?
Website Retargeting Lookalike uses signals from your website audience to help identify new prospects with similar interests and behaviors.
Instead of only showing ads to previous website visitors, your existing traffic becomes a model for building a new prospecting audience.
Consider a furniture retailer whose website attracts people browsing:
Sofas and sectionals
Mattresses
Dining-room furniture
Financing options
Current sales and promotions
Those visitors have already demonstrated an interest in what the retailer sells. Collectively, that traffic can provide valuable clues about the types of people who may be most likely to become customers.
The difference is simple:
Website retargeting asks: How can we reach this website visitor again?
Website Retargeting Lookalike asks: How can we find new potential customers who are similar to our website visitors?
Instead of guessing what an interested prospect might look like, advertisers can learn from people already engaging with the business.
Your Website Traffic Is More Than Traffic
Businesses often evaluate website traffic based on what happens during an individual visit.
Did the visitor:
Make a purchase?
Submit a form?
Call the business?
Visit an important product or service page?
Request directions?
Schedule an appointment?
Those actions still matter. But visitors do not necessarily have to convert immediately for that website traffic to provide value.
With Website Retargeting Lookalike, the audience visiting your website can help inform future prospecting. Your business can use signals from people already showing interest to help find additional prospects who share similar characteristics and behaviors.
Your website is no longer only the place where your advertising sends potential customers.
The people visiting it can help determine who your advertising reaches next.
Your website may not literally know who your next customer is. But your visitors could be leaving valuable clues.
More Targeting Options Don’t Guarantee Better Results
Should every business immediately add CTV Content Targeting and Website Retargeting Lookalike to its advertising plan?
No.
New targeting capabilities are exciting, but having more options does not automatically produce better advertising.
CTV Content Targeting may be a strong fit for a business that has compelling video creative and wants to align its message with relevant streaming content.
Website Retargeting Lookalike may make more sense for a business that already generates meaningful website traffic and wants to use that audience to reach new prospects.
Some advertisers may benefit from both. Others may not be ready for either.
Before choosing a targeting tool, businesses should answer a few fundamental questions:
Who are we trying to reach?
What do we want that audience to do?
What do we already know about our customers?
What audience signals do we currently have?
Where are our potential customers spending their time?
Which advertising options best support the campaign’s goal?
The technology isn’t the strategy.
New technology gives advertisers more ways to reach people. Strategy determines which of those options are worth using.
Follow the Clues to Your Next Customer
CTV Content Targeting and Website Retargeting Lookalike give businesses two new ways to reduce guesswork.
One uses clues from what potential customers watch. The other uses signals from the people already visiting your website.
Neither option replaces a strong advertising strategy. But when used for the right business and the right goal, they can help advertisers reach more relevant potential customers.
Watch the latest Wheeler Digital Wise Guys episode above to hear Cameron and Fredy explain how these targeting options work.
Want to know whether either strategy makes sense for your business? Visit WheelerDigital.com and talk with the Wheeler Digital team.
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