Welcome back to our series on marketing jobs to be done, where we explore how BlueConic helps hands-on doers achieve their core objectives and drive transformative results with every click. In our first installment, we highlighted the importance of knowing your customers. Now, we’ll explore how that understanding enables you to effectively expand your brand reach and awareness.
In a cluttered market where consumers are flooded with choices, breaking through the noise can feel like a monumental task. Yet, reaching new audiences is crucial for long-term business growth. As a marketer, your ability to increase brand awareness directly influences how many people know, like, and trust your brand—which sets the stage for engagement, conversions, and loyalty.
Unlike traditional mass marketing, today’s digital ecosystem allows for a far more strategic approach to expanding. By leveraging first-party data and advanced targeting techniques, you can grow your audience with precision.
A Quality-First Approach to Brand Reach
At its core, brand reach is about exposure—making sure as many relevant people as possible know who you are and what you offer. The more familiar your audience is with your brand, the more likely they are to engage and eventually convert into customers. But it’s not about getting your brand in front of just anyone; it’s about creating awareness with audiences that align with your ideal customer profile.
By providing a robust foundation of customer understanding, BlueConic equips front-line marketers with the insights needed to identify and engage their most relevant audiences. Here are four strategies to ensure you’re directing your efforts where they will be most impactful.
1. Paid Media Targeting: Make Every Ad Count
Paid media remains a powerful tool for expanding reach beyond your owned channels, but making the most of your investment means targeting with precision. By tapping into unified customer data, you can serve hyper-relevant ads that resonate with the people most likely to convert.
Start by identifying the attributes for segmentation that are most important to your awareness objectives, such as age, gender, location, psychographics, lifestyle, and interests. Then, use these attributes to create specific and detailed segments of your audience, along with messaging and creative that captures their attention and encourages exploration of your brand. Once created, these segments can be automatically sent to platforms like Facebook and Google for immediate activation, ensuring that your ads reach the right audiences at the right time.
Finally, be sure to monitor your campaign analytics closely. Metrics such as impressions, reach, and engagement rates will help gauge effectiveness and inform necessary adjustments to your strategy. By employing these tactics, you can ensure that every ad you serve contributes to your awareness objectives while maximizing return on investment.
2. Look-Alike Targeting: Scale Your Audience with Precision
Are your first-party segments too narrow to build meaningful brand awareness? By analyzing historical first-party data, you can identify new audiences that closely resemble your best customers and engage them with personalized offers and messaging.
Start by segmenting your best customers based on key characteristics like purchase behavior, interests, or geographic location. With BlueConic, you can then apply look-alike models to identify new individuals who share similar traits — without IT assistance. These individuals become the look-alike audience that you can target with personalized promotions and product recommendations.
Utilizing a data clean room can also enhance your ability to scale your audience with precision. By combining your first-party data with trusted partners, you can identify high-value audiences and model look-alike audiences based on these insights – broadening the scope of potential customers you can reach.
3. Web Personalization: Tailor Every Experience
Website personalization is critical for expanding your brand's reach and awareness. As the old saying goes, you never get a second chance to make a first impression. Fortunately, first-party data collected during a single visit or interaction can be immediately useful for real-time personalization.
Using BlueConic to capture and analyze behavioral data as users browse—such as the pages they visit, products they explore, and actions they take—you can implement real-time personalization strategies that resonate with their interests. Examples include:
Dynamic content and recommendation engines that display personalized product suggestions or content to first-time visitors based on their browsing behavior
Interactive experiences such as polls, quizzes, product finders, lookbooks and more that engage users and create memorable interactions
Personalized landing pages that provide a tailored experience to individual visitors based on their interests and demographics
Behavioral triggers that respond to visitor actions, such as offering a discount to a visitor who adds an item to their cart but leaves without completing the purchase.
By starting here, you can make a stronger first impression and increase the chances of users interacting with the website, staying longer, and taking desired actions.
4. Newsletter Lead Generation: Nurturing Awareness
Email newsletters are a time-tested strategy for nurturing awareness and engaging potential customers. By leveraging first-party data, you can build and segment your email list to ensure that your newsletters reach the right audience with the right message.
Begin by segmenting your audience according to their interests, demographics, or behaviors. Focus on delivering valuable content that showcases your brand’s offerings and builds familiarity. For example, if a subscriber expresses interest in fitness, send them newsletters featuring fitness tips, popular products, and exclusive promotions. Including engaging elements like polls and surveys can further enhance interaction and make subscribers feel involved.
By using email newsletters as a strategic awareness tool, you can expand your reach, engage potential customers, and cultivate a loyal audience.
In the ever-competitive digital landscape, expanding your brand’s reach is crucial to long-term success. But it’s not about casting the widest net—it’s about being intentional, data-driven, and strategic in how you approach brand awareness. By implementing these strategies, you can help grow your audience and ensure that your brand is seen by the people who matter most.
