Digital audience targeting: Defining your audience, strategy, and goals

The sheer amount of competition in the ad world today can seem overwhelming, especially when you find yourself attempting to serve effective ads without a defined digital audience for targeting. After all, successful advertising hinges on your ability to reach the people who will be the most interested in your product or service.

That’s when knowing how to define your digital audience targeting comes in handy.

What is audience targeting

Digital audience targeting, otherwise known as a target market, is a defined group of people who are considered to be a company or brand’s ideal customers. How old are they? Where are they located? What are they interested in? What drives their purchase behavior?

Digital audience targeting: the five W’s

It’s a tale as old as time. “Who, what, when, where, why” has been drilled into our heads since high school. The good news: Those classic five questions still come in handy today, especially when starting to outline your ideal customer profiles.

With roughly nine out of 10 American citizens using the internet today, it goes without saying that trying to reach all of them wouldn’t be the brightest marketing move. Instead, crafting advertising that feels personalized toward the people most likely to buy from you is a much better move.

Defining and building a target audience for a new client or campaign—no matter how many times you’ve done it—can still be tricky. That’s why we created this fill-in-the-blanks-style guide to help you kickstart each audience and digital advertising campaign.

Below, mad-lib your way to a well-defined target audience. Once filled in, your new audience—along with defined strategies and goals—will be ready to go for your next digital campaign.