Why brands are seeking more nuanced, humanized audience segmentation for campaign success

Laura Goldstone, senior director, communications and branding strategy, AdDaptive Intelligence

Despite the hard work brands put into running ad campaigns, too many post-campaign reports simply offer basic, standalone metrics such as impressions and clicks-in-aggregate. These standard reporting frameworks may show whether or not the advertisers hit their KPIs but often leave out the insights that tell them how or why. Naturally, this leaves many teams feeling unequipped to benchmark success and adequately prepare for the future.

This scenario is familiar to many if not all, advertisers. Campaign reports may highlight how successfully advertisers reach their target audience, but without a strategic conversation about context, that data will likely fail to be actionable. 

Brands need high-quality segmentation insights to understand the meaning of their data.

Moreover, as brands dig deeper into data, they may notice that their audience’s preferences have transformed and evolved. What worked before may no longer be effective. In response, advertisers are turning to solutions that offer comprehensive analytics and strategic insights to uncover the contextual components of audiences and bring this complex data to life. This is helping brands see real-life people in a sea of “consumers.”

Brands that fail to understand the human side of their data risk wasting time, resources and money in their advertising campaigns. Gaining a nuanced view of their audiences’ preferences, behaviors and experiences is vital for effective segmentation and messaging that resonates with every buyer.

Analytics tools are helping brands extract audience insights for improved targeting

As marketing and advertising teams unpack vast quantities of audience data, many are finding it vital to shift priorities and redefine their goals. 

Instead of simply comparing clicks across campaigns or confirming that impressions were served, successful brands are using analytics tools to develop a thorough understanding of audience perceptions and experiences in the early stages of customer journeys. This deeper level of audience empathy helps advertisers gain a more holistic, well-rounded picture of their target consumers, which in turn can fuel more effective campaigns. 

However, cross-platform, cross-channel audiences can be hard to follow. Their continual movement across environments makes gaining a clear picture of the buying journey challenging. 

Fortunately, marketers using comprehensive analytics reports and tools can craft high-quality audience segments based on highly specific parameters, such as firmographics or demographics, verticals, funnel stage, previous interactions and other data. Such robust insights enable greater audience analysis for more effective targeting.

In-depth audience evaluation is helping advertisers develop more relevant buying journeys

Using in-depth analytics and reporting tools, brands can extract greater context from audience data and more effectively tailor campaigns to specific customer journeys. 

For example, showing audiences that brands know what they need and how they prefer to be engaged — i.e., relevant creative types, channels, devices or messages — helps advertising teams deliver the right message to relevant segments at optimal times, garnering positive responses.

Contextual insights drawn from audience data help fuel lead nurturing based on the consumer’s funnel stage and their preferred channels and facilitate accurate attribution, as advertising and marketing efforts are more closely tied to specific audience segments. The approach is a powerful lens onto what works well for each parameter and which areas should be tweaked for greater effectiveness in the future.

Ultimately, these audience insights are enabling brands to improve messaging, tailoring approaches more closely to buying journeys and attributing the results to every touchpoint along the way. Nuanced insights craft holistic pictures of consumers that help brands make more informed campaign decisions for lasting, long-term success.

Partnerships are helping advertisers extract relevant insights and make data-driven decisions

Most brands know the importance of going beyond a surface-level reading of audience data. Yet obtaining actionable insights from that information is often easier said than done, even with high-quality solutions. With so much data coming from disparate sources, it’s difficult to standardize the information for any form of substantive analysis.  

To address this challenge, brands are developing partnerships with advertising platforms that offer extensive analysis and one-on-one assistance. The most effective partners are helping advertisers craft actionable audience segments and creative while providing strategic optimization recommendations to get the most value from their data.

Savvy brands are using these nuanced insights to make more data-driven decisions that inform and coordinate advertising efforts. From customized sales outreach to targeted marketing messages, brands that utilize high-quality analytics tools and work with experienced partners can offer more engaging experiences and generate greater resonance across their audience segments.

Sponsored by AdDaptive Intelligence

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