Target marketing involves breaking a market into segments and then concentrating your marketing efforts on one or a few key segments consisting of the customers whose needs and desires most closely match your product or service offerings. It can be the key to attracting new business, increasing sales, and making your business a success.

Targeting in marketing is a strategy that breaks a large market into smaller segments to concentrate on a specific group of customers within that audience. It defines a segment of customers based on their unique characteristics and focuses solely on serving them.

Instead of trying to reach an entire market, a brand uses target marketing to put their energy into connecting with a specific, defined group within that market.

Five Different Types of Targeting

1.Behavioral Targeting (aka audience targeting)

Behavioral targeting is the practice of segmenting customers based on web browsing behavior, including things like pages visited, searches performed, links clicked, and products purchased. If you add mobile and physical store data into the mix, that can also include things like location, and in-store purchases. Visitors with similar behaviors are then grouped into defined audience segments, allowing advertisers to target them with specific, relevant ads and content based on their browsing and purchase history. An oft cited example of behavioral targeting is retargeting ads.

2. Contextual Targeting

Contextual targeting involves displaying ads based on a website’s content. Think: placing an ad for dishware on a recipe site, or an ad for running shoes on a running forum. It’s kind of like the digital version of placing a print ad in a niche magazine. It works based on the assumption that someone reading a page about running is likely to also be interested in your ad for sneakers.

3. Search Retargeting

Search retargeting is when you serve display ads to users as they browse the web based on their keyword search behavior. Campaigns are set up with keywords that you choose and that are relevant to your business or products. For example, if you are a furniture retailer, you might want to serve display ads to users who have searched for “leather couch”, or “leather sectional”. This kind of advertising is successful because it uses intent to connect with shoppers. The shopper may or may not know about you, but they are showing interest in a product or solution that you offer. Think of this as an upper funnel, prospecting strategy.

4. Site Retargeting

Site retargeting, also known as just “retargeting”, involves showing display ads to users who visited your site and then left without completing a purchase to browse elsewhere. It differs from search retargeting in two important ways: it is not keyword based, and it is targeting people who are already familiar with your brand, or who at least have visited your site once and showed interest in your offerings. Because of this brand recognition, the ROI of site retargeting is often extremely high. Think of this as a lower funnel, conversion focused strategy.

5. Predictive Targeting

Predictive targeting uses all of the web browsing data from behavioral targeting, layers in 3rd party data (if available), and applies powerful AI and machine learning to analyze the data and predict future buying patterns based on past behaviors. The AI that powers predictive targeting can make connections between behaviors, identify similar and related products for upselling and cross-selling, and zero in on the shoppers most likely to convert at any given time—all in an instant. And the more data it analyzes, the more it learns and the better its models become.