How to Identify Your Target Audience with Data
(part 1 of 3)
It's a mad mad digital world! The Internet and proliferation of devices to access it across the globe have forever changed how customers learn and buy - and how companies engage with their audiences along the buyer's journey.
This digital buyer reality requires you, as a modern-day B2B marketer, to adapt and develop in-the-moment digital experiences for personalized engagement with your target market. But without the right data and tools, you may wonder how to make sense of your online audience - who, when, where and how to engage with them.
Dun & Bradstreet in collaboration with the Oracle Data Cloud are pleased to offer you this Digital Advertising Sanity Check: Six Scientific Steps to B2B Programmatic Success.
Taking a "data informed" approach to audience definition is much like a science experiment - it is an evidence-based process that relies on empirical repeatable testing to learn the truth. This sanity check offers a "common data sense method" for making programmatic work for you and your audience, including these six scientific steps:
Step #1 - Ask the Question: Who is my target audience?
Step #2 - Do the Research: Assess the environment: Programmatic 101
Step #3 - Formulate the Hypothesis: Audience data fuels my programmatic plan.
Step #4 - Develop a Testable Experiment: Connecting audience data to addressable IDs
Step #5 - Conduct Your Experiment: Deliver audience data to activation partners
Step #6 - Observe the Results: Measure for closed-loop programmatic
In this first of three posts, we'll spend some time on a very fundamental and critical marketing question - Who is my target audience?
The heart of the matter for a marketer is putting a relevant message in front of targeted personas who are most likely to buy, no matter where they are, when it is and what devices they are using across the web.
When it comes to executing programmatic, defining the right audience is the first critical step. Data is essential to define your ideal list of business buyers; those who you believe will find your products and services most compelling. This lets you dive deeper with existing customers, already engaged individuals and, of course, net-new prospects that aren't yet on your radar.
You should coordinate audience-based programmatic efforts with your larger plan. Properly mapping your campaign objectives to the buyer's journey is a critical consideration. We know that B2B buyers are spending a lot more time online as they go through the awareness, consideration, evaluation and purchase decision steps. Your customers are not buying a pair of shoes online - they're likely buying high-ticket products or services. They're involved in a multi-step buying process, both online and offline, including deep educational content study and in-person meeting and event engagement before making high-dollar purchase decisions. It's therefore important for the B2B marketer to synchronize online ad placement with the broader programs and campaign objectives at hand.
Here's a quick hit list to help answer your big audience question:
Well-balanced programmatic starts with discerning audience definition, connected to your marketing objectives and the holistic customer journey. Done right, you will gain valuable insights about your audience as they walk through that journey - and confidently offer up personalized content to them along the way.
Read more in the Digital Advertising Sanity Check: Six Scientific Steps to B2B Programmatic Success and watch for the second and third installments of this blog which will highlight important topics from the programmatic data science experiment.
***
Together Dun & Bradstreet and the Oracle Data Cloud have collaborated to bring a best-in-class natively integrated audience data and technology solution to hundreds of B2B marketers. Contact Oracle's Data Hotline to learn more.