Audience targeting is one of the most critical components of a digital marketing campaign. However, fewer marketers bother to define, segment, and target a specific audience based on predetermined criteria and instead try to market to a more generalized group of people. That can result in unsuccessful marketing outcomes that fail to generate a return on investment. Learn more about audience targeting in digital marketing and how it works below!
What is a target audience in digital marketing?
So what is a target audience in digital marketing? Well, a target audience is a specific group defined by shared characteristics that you want to reach with your digital marketing campaign. For example, a group of 18-24-year-olds residing in North America. Targeting a specific audience lets you be more precise when determining the people who view your marketing material. It reaches clearly-defined prospects on the internet according to their shared behavior, demographics, psychographics, and other factors. That can maximize profits from your marketing spend.
Say you launch a new sneaker catering to long-distance runners visiting national parks in the United States. Targeting other prospects with your marketing would likely be fruitless because they would not be interested in your sneaker. That's why you'd invest in audience targeting. It lets you reach your preferred prospects across the internet with materials such as blogs, videos, emails, social media posts, and other content types.
4 Common types of audience targeting
Audience targeting types refer to the criteria you use to define and segment your audience. This helps businesses focus on specific groups based on their characteristics or behaviors before they've interacted with the brand or expressed buying intent. Essentially, you're deciding who your audience is.
Demographic
Targeting an audience based on shared demographics means focusing your marketing efforts on a group of people with a similar age, income, job type, education level,, and other factors. This type of targeting helps businesses align their messaging with the needs, lifestyles, and purchasing power of a specific customer segment.
For example, a legal software company might target lawyers aged 30–40 with a Master's degree in New York City who make $100,000 annually. Your digital marketing target audience might be based on less specific demographics than this but you will still need to divide a generalized audience into clearly-defined segments.
Geographic
Targeting an audience based on geographic location means focusing your marketing on people in a specific region, city, neighborhood, or even climate zone. This type of targeting is useful for businesses with location-specific offerings or when tailoring messages based on local preferences.
For example, a home solar panel company might target homeowners in sunny areas like Phoenix, Arizona, where year-round sunshine makes solar energy a more appealing investment.
Psychographic
Targeting an audience based on psychographics involves focusing your marketing efforts on a group of people who share similar interests, attitudes, opinions, lifestyles, goals, values, political views, and personality types. This is especially useful for brands looking to build emotional connections or align with customer beliefs.
For example, a fitness apparel brand might target health-conscious millennials who value sustainability, enjoy outdoor activities, and prefer eco-friendly products.
Behavioral
If psychographic targeting involves targeting an audience based on how they feel, behavioral targeting involves fixing on an audience based on how they act. Here you segment a generalized audience into portions who share similar behavioral patterns. This approach helps companies reach audiences based on purchase intent, loyalty, usage rate, and other actionable behaviors.
For example, a SaaS company might target operations managers who have downloaded multiple whitepapers and attended recent webinars, indicating they’re in the consideration phase of the buying journey.
Each approach above depends on your customer goals and specific audience. You might use a combination of demographic, geographic, psychographic, and behavioral elements in a campaign. For example, a luxury travel company might target high-income professionals in Los Angeles who value unique experiences and tend to book spontaneous getaways after seeing influencer recommendations.
Common audience types
Audience types are groups of people categorized by their behaviors or intent within a specific platform (like Google, Meta, or LinkedIn). These audiences are pre-built by the platform and are based on user data collected from their activities, interests, or engagement with ads. You're targeting people who already exhibit specific behaviors or intent. These audience types are powerful tools for refining who sees your ads and when.
Affinity audience
Affinity audiences are made up of people with long-term interests and lifestyle habits. These audiences are great for building brand awareness by reaching users who consistently engage with topics relevant to your product or service.
For example, a hiking gear brand might target outdoor enthusiasts who regularly browse travel blogs, watch nature documentaries, and follow camping influencers.
In-market audience
In-market audiences include users who are actively researching or comparing products in a specific category. These people are close to making a purchase decision, making this targeting ideal for conversion-driven campaigns.
For example, a car dealership might target people actively searching for hybrid SUVs, reading reviews, and comparing models online.
Lookalike or similar audiences
Lookalike (Meta) or Similar (Google) audiences help advertisers reach new people who share characteristics with their existing customers. This expands your reach while maintaining relevance and performance.
For example, an online course platform might target a lookalike audience based on people who already purchased business leadership classes.
Remarketing
Remarketing targets users who have previously interacted with your website, app, or ads but didn’t convert. It’s a great way to stay top of mind and re-engage warm leads.
For example, an online furniture store might show ads for a specific couch to visitors who viewed it but didn’t complete their purchase.
How to find your digital marketing target audience
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Identifying your target audience is a crucial step in crafting a successful digital marketing strategy. But where do you begin when you need to pinpoint exactly who your audience is? Let's explore some effective methods for finding and narrowing down your target audience.
SEO
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) isn't just for ranking higher in search engines. It can also provide valuable insights about your target audience. By analyzing organic search traffic, you can uncover useful demographic data, such as where your visitors are coming from, what age group they belong to, and even which keywords are driving the most traffic. These internal insights allow you to better understand the types of people who are already interested in your content, products, or services.
First-party data
First-party data (1P data) refers to information you've directly collected from your customers, such as through surveys, customer relationship management (CRM) systems, or website interactions. This data is incredibly valuable because it’s specific to your audience and tends to be more accurate than second- or third-party data, which you don't have control over. With first-party data, you can create highly tailored audience segments based on behaviors, preferences, and interactions.
Third party data
If you need additional insights, third-party data sources can fill the gaps by offering broader market research and audience data. These sources gather data from multiple external platforms and organizations, helping you expand your reach and understand trends beyond your own audience. However, while third-party data can enhance your understanding, it’s important to ensure you’re still prioritizing first-party data to keep your targeting as accurate as possible.
Social media insights
Social media platforms provide rich insights into who is engaging with your content. Tools like Facebook Insights, Instagram Analytics, or LinkedIn's audience analysis feature allow you to see demographic information such as age, gender, location, and even interests based on how users are interacting with your posts or ads. This data helps refine your target audience and improve ad performance by reaching people who are most likely to engage with your content.
Programmatic audience targeting: How it works
Programmatic audience targeting in digital marketing (or programmatic, for short) involves targeting an audience based on their online behavior. It includes buying and showing ads to a specific audience with similar behavioral characteristics, such as making purchasing decisions, choosing a company, and responding to advertising campaigns.
The benefits of programmatic include increased ad efficiency, creating cross-device campaigns, and the opportunity to target an audience in real time. You can also reduce advertising costs because you will no longer waste money targeting an audience that doesn't respond to your advertising and is not interested in your products and services.
Measuring audience targeting effectiveness
Measuring the effectiveness of audience targeting is important for maximizing ROI in digital advertising. Tracking performance helps identify which strategies drive conversions and where adjustments are needed.
- A/B testing allows you to compare different audience segments by creating multiple ad sets and observing variations in metrics like click-through and conversion rates. For instance, testing ads for long-distance runners versus casual joggers can reveal which audience responds better, allowing for more targeted budget allocation.
- Attribution models help understand the touch points contributing to conversions. Common ways include first-touch, last-touch, and multi-touch. Choosing the right model helps refine targeting by identifying influential segments.
- Conversion tracking involves monitoring key user actions, such as purchases or form submissions, to assess campaign performance. Analyzing ROI based on these conversions reveals which audience segments deliver the highest returns. If certain groups show low ROI, consider reallocating your budget or adjusting targeting criteria.
Use the insights from testing and tracking to optimize audience targeting in campaigns. This may involve refining audience characteristics, adjusting bidding strategies for high-converting segments, or tailoring ad creatives to resonate with specific groups. Ongoing measurement and optimization make advertising more precise, reduce wasted spend, and boost campaign ROAS.
Final word about audience targeting in digital marketing
Without audience targeting, you'll be marketing your offerings to a generalized audience of people who don't care about your offerings and won't invest in your brand. You'll squander your marketing budget and waste time chasing leads that never convert. So spend time targeting an audience based on shared demographics, psychographics, and behaviors and use programmatic to move potential customers through your marketing pipelines. A targeted digital advertising agency like Symphonic helps you achieve these digital marketing goals.
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