Audience Targeting: Look-Alike, Custom, & Licensed Custom Audiences
For too long, marketers have had limited options for audience targeting. Outside of broad search keyword targeting, the two most refined options are look-alike audiences and custom audiences. Broad match keyword targeting and look-alike audiences offer avenues for capturing new customers. While custom audiences is used for lead nurturing. What has been missing is a middle ground; an avenue for targeting known prospects who have not yet engaged with your brand.
With the advent of AI, marketing teams can now use detailed data analysis to reach a refined and finely targeted audience. Adding Licensed Custom Audiences to your marketing strategies supercharges your Fran Dev efforts and results.
Before we dig into how Licensed Custom Audiences provide the boost your marketing team needs, let’s review look-alike and custom audiences and why they can’t meet all your needs.
Look-Alike vs Custom Audiences: Strengths and Weaknesses
Look-alike audiences are most frequently used for social media and programmatic advertising. It relies on your current audience profile to find others who share those characteristics. Utilizing your existing customer list, website visitor list, or email subscribers, algorithms can analyze the data to target others who share the same patterns and/or traits.
This can be a valuable tool in traditional advertising, where anyone with the same characteristics could benefit from your product or service. However, for Fran Dev teams, look-alike audiences face a significant uphill battle. Even if you have a profile of your typical franchisee and their background, demographic, and psychographic interests, targeting this type of person won’t take into consideration that not everyone who shares the same traits wants to open a business. This critical element of the equation leaves look-alike audiences as a poor option for most Fran Dev campaigns.
Custom audience targeting is an extremely valuable component of an effective marketing campaign. This type of targeting is used most often for PPC, programmatic, and social media advertising. This low-funnel approach is a lead-nurturing effort. Utilizing your own, first-party data from email lists, website visits, phone numbers, and other engagement tracking tools, marketing teams can target individuals who have already engaged with their brand.
For Fran Dev marketing, custom audiences provide an extremely effective tool for keeping messaging top of mind to individuals who have already interacted with your top of funnel campaigns, website or social media profiles.
Why Licensed Custom Data is Needed
So why does Fran Dev need Licensed Custom Data? Top of funnel ads can target anyone looking to buy or start a business. As they interact with your brand, you push them into your custom audience profile and continue to nurture them, hopefully turning them into franchisees. It’s the model we’ve been using for years.
What this model doesn’t offer is a way to refine the top of funnel targeting. Paid media efforts focusing on broad terms is expensive. The pool of individuals interested in opening a business is relatively small, at around 5 million people per year. All franchise brands are competing for the attention of the same few who will become future franchisees, driving up the cost per lead.
Licensed Custom Data is the middle step that has been missing for far too long. This type of targeting makes it possible to build a custom audience segment using third-party data. Using the high quality, legally sourced data we provide, it is now possible to use precise targeting to reach individuals who are not yet in your sales funnel!
With Licensed Custom Data, Fran Dev marketing teams will now be able to specifically target individuals who have been looking for business ownership opportunities. No more wasting funds on look-alike audiences who may or may not be interested in opening a business. No more relying on expensive broad search terms that force you to bid against every other brand opening new locations.
Franchise Ninja provides key demographic and psychographic information on up to 1.5 million individuals searching for information on starting or buying a business. We identify these individuals with up to 40 key pieces of data, including:
First and Last Name
Email address
Estimated Net Worth
Estimated Income
Age
Current Employer
Current Job Title
With this information, your marketing team can now create customized, 1:1 messaging to reach these individuals.
Licensed Custom Audiences make it possible to expand the pool of prospects without having to rely on broad search terms that eat up marketing budgets. In fact, with Franchise Ninja as your data partner, you won’t even need to increase your advertising budget.
Simply redirect your broad match and look-alike audience spend to Licensed Custom Data. Advertising directly to a pre-qualified individual who meets your ideal profile, lives in your target market, and who you KNOW is looking to buy or own a business increases the likelihood that he or she will engage with your Fran Dev website and sales team.
Once they engage with your site, they slip into your existing custom audience campaigns for continued lead nurturing. To assist your sales team with their efforts, we also provide real-time notifications when anyone from your Licensed Custom Data list lands on your site. Your team can also take advantage of AI Sales Coach to get a cheat sheet on the best way to approach and speak to these potential future franchisees.
The goal of any marketing campaign should be to maximize ROI. Spend less, attract more interest, and close more deals. With Licensed Custom Data, your team can take their marketing and sales efforts to the next level.
