HubSpot InBound Certified

Wednesday 30 December 2015

How to Target Specific Individuals using Digital Channels?

Well, this post wasn't planned at all. A call from work on same topic encouraged me to write a blog post on this. It may or may not be often that businesses around the world feel this need of targeting only specific individuals for promotions. I work for a B2B company and for us, it's almost essential to be very frugal in our spends and ensure whatever little we spend, they are very focused and restricted to our target set of audience only.

There're various ways (paid and non-paid) which allows advertisers to target either set of individuals or audience who exhibits similar characteristics. Please note that advertising methods on all channels require a customer's opt-in which means if someone has not opted in to receive email newsletters or facebook ads then they will not receive any of your promotional messages on respective channels. However, if they're opt-in individuals then you may send promotional ads to them digitally from following ways:

A) EMAIL MARKETING
If you know the email ids of your target audience then the best possible way is to send them an email with compelling & attractive headline. You may devise a strategy to nurture your audience with series of emails scheduled on a timely basis. Email marketing is still considered to be the best & cheapest way to reach out to your target audience and evoke response or influence conversions.

B) LINKEDIN INMAILS
Engage with them on LinkedIn via InMails. With InMails 2.0, dynamic delivery allows high open rates and increased probability of conversions/ engagement. Individuals who wish to send InMails to target individuals may purchase InMails credits themselves and send InMails instantly.
 
C) CUSTOM AUDIENCE
A Custom audience list can be created in Google Adwords, Facebook & Twitter by uploading a list of target email addresses (when in doubt, use both personal & professional emails). The audience can then be segmented & targeted digitally on respective channels. Advertisers can also leverage similar audience feature on these platforms that allow them to reach out to individuals who’re similar to their target contacts.

D) TAGGING & DIRECT MESSAGE
If you and your target audience are following each other on Twitter & Facebook then you may write a tweet & post respectively, mentioning their handles or tagging them on the post. A notification will go to them and they can read the content they’re tagged on and may engage with you directly over there on respective platforms.
 
E) ADROLL CRM RE-TARGETING
Adroll has a feature of CRM re-targeting which works similar to custom audiences in Google, Facebook & Twitter. The advertiser needs to upload a list of email ids/ directly import from CRM in the Adroll dashboard and the tool will then show them banner ads/ facebook/ twitter ads to these audience. Adroll can also target similar audiences who exhibits characteristics similar to your target audience.

F) ONLINE GROUPS & DISCUSSION FORUMS
Identify groups related to your service/ expertise and start a topic/ discussion. Before doing this, make sure that their target audience is a part of that group. If you’ve your own group/ community to which your target audience has already subscribed for then you may engage with them directly over there or they can receive content/topic in regular email newsletters.

Hope you'll find this info useful.