Advertising’s original value proposition was simple: Get the word out to as many people as possible. One message had to work for everyone.
Maybe it felt like they were talking directly to you, but advertisers of old reached you by targeting a tribe or collection of similar people: people who drive cars, people who shave, people who run, fathers of young children, households of four or more.
Today, advertisements speak directly to you, not as a member of a group, but as an individual with specific tastes and behaviors. As marketing tools evolve, the line between advertisements and reminders blurs.
For instance, if you search for a watch on Amazon and an ad for it follows you around the internet, is it an advertisement or a service? What about price increase warnings for the flights you look up?
This hyper-focused form of advertising has become known as microtargeting: the ability to serve ads to consumers as individuals rather than as groups. It can feel like magic when the internet serves you up the things you want as if reading your mind. A decade ago, this was nearly impossible.
However, modern advertisers are able to pick the behaviors they want to target with their ads such as people who recently used a mortgage calculator or searched for homes for sale in a specific neighborhood.
Now, microtargeting allows you to target a specific list of individuals: customers, past customers, prospects, your friends and family, neighbors and more. You can target an ad to anybody for whom you have contact info. Audiences can be as small as 20 individuals.
For real estate professionals, microtargeting offers an incredible way to connect with prospects by providing a mechanism to connect with every person as an individual.
Below are five ways you can use microtargeting to grow your business.
Follow-ups
You’re likely already emailing the people you meet, thanking them and maybe even adding them to an automated drip campaign. However, you can also add a microtargeted ad campaign to the ways you reach out to contacts, staying in front of them when they use the internet.
Work your referral network
Most agents with any longevity in the industry will tell you referrals are king. Many agents can also share the pain of finding out they weren’t referred when a friend or relative of one of their great clients needed an agent.
Microtargeting lets you break the clients who refer you into an audience and serve them ads that encourage their referral behavior.
Target your vendors
Agents often have a network of trusted vendors that they refer business to repeatedly. These vendors can often refer business back to you. Create a vendor audience in your ad targeting regime to ensure your favorite vendors remain aware of you.
Don’t forget media
You can target local media who cover real estate in your area to get your message out. Place all of your media contacts into an audience and target them with ads of your latest business news or announcements.
This costs a fraction of publishing a press release, and you can keep your message in front of the relevant media professionals for days or weeks on end.
Maximize your giving
If you sponsor a local event or cause, you probably do so partly to increase your community visibility. Be sure to use the event list to target ads to those who attended the event.
Demonstrating an interest in the same or similar cause with a microtargeted ad is a perfect opportunity to double up on your branding.
As the leading provider of digital advertising for real estate agents, Adwerx specializes in delivering powerful, cutting-edge marketing technology that’s simple for agents to use. Click here to see how you can try microtargeting your most valued contacts for free using our easy tool.