Did you know 77% of marketing ROI comes from segmented, targeted, and triggered campaigns?
Audience segmentation helps your campaigns rise above mediocrity to become more relevant and personalized.
Marketers can deliver tailored messaging, develop stronger customer connections, and increase return on ad spend by identifying subgroups within target audiences that share personality traits and buying habits.
Categorizing your larger target audience pool into smaller micro-audiences allows you to be more precise with your advertising strategies—which, in turn, helps you reap significant returns on your investment.
So, what are micro-audiences, and how do you create experiences specific to them? Let’s find out.
What is a micro-audience?
A micro-audience is an audience subset or segment created based on demographics and additional consumer data such as interests, behavior, gender identity, age, ethnicity, income, level of formal education, location, etc.
Though the term “micro” suggests a tiny audience segment, members of a micro-audience can range from several dozen cohorts to populations of tens of thousands based on the subset of the larger audience pool you want to target.
To best understand what a micro-audience is, consider Reddit. The community social media platform is full of micro-audiences or subreddits (hyper-focused communities centered around niche topics). Because each group focuses on unique topics, members feel comfortable asking niche questions and getting into the nitty-gritty of relevant topics, confident that the community will be equally invested.
Why are micro-audiences important?
Creating a micro-audience helps you predict the buying behavior of like-minded individuals and influence this behavior through hyper-targeted messaging and experiences.
When you create micro-audiences, you can:
- Refine your target audiences
- Understand unique conversion influences you can use in your messaging
- Create meaningful relationships with those audiences, which leads to better retention and higher lifetime value
- Test precise optimization efforts based on audience data
Now that you know how beneficial micro-audiences are to your campaign, the next step is to learn to identify them in a process called micro-targeting.
Micro-targeting is the synthesis of predictive analytics and data insights. It gives marketers access to a vast amount of data, which they can use to create such a comprehensive audience profile that they can deliver their messages to users who will be most receptive to them. And they can even deliver those messages to the audience’s preferred device.
Data collection methods for pre-click experiences include audience analysis in advertising platforms such as Google Ads and Facebook Ads. Both ad giants help marketers segment their audiences based on multiple data points, which allows them to fine-tune their audiences’ makeup. To collect post-click audience data for creating personalized experiences, testing is your best friend.
How to create experiences for micro-audiences
Creating unique experiences for every micro-audience is not easy. Because multiple possible variables influence any given segment’s purchasing decision, it can be challenging to understand which factors matter most to specific audiences.
Testing is necessary to create personalized experiences for micro-audiences. The best way to build conversion-worthy experiences that get users excited about your service/offer is to thoroughly experiment with page elements and layouts.
Ideally, you should create personalized pages that address each micro-audience’s specific needs and answer any potential sales objections they might have. Consider testing the following landing page elements when creating personalized experiences to refine and define your micro-audiences’ preferences beyond the ad click.
Headline
The headline is the first hook your landing page needs to reel visitors in to your page experience. Test different headlines based on product benefits and use cases to see which resonates more with which audience pool.
Let’s compare the headlines and above-the-fold copy of web-design platforms Visme and Easil to see how their messaging resonates with different audiences.
Visme’s headline highlights the tool and addresses “seasoned designer” and “total novice” audiences with a single experience.
Easil, on the other hand, features a headline geared toward beginners and novices—it talks about how the easy drag-and-drop design tool helps beginners create professional visuals.
Framing your headline differently can help identify which audience segment is most likely to commit to the conversion action.
Narrative
Your landing page narrative is the story you’re telling on your page. It includes the body copy, customer testimonials, social proof, CTA button copy, and visuals.
How should you explain the offer to your audience? That will vary, based on what they’re expecting from your brand.
Consider the narratives Apple and OnePlus feature on their respective pages—both mobile brands have visually rich pages with minimal copy. However, the Apple page narrative is more confident. The page has no customer testimonials or press features (because Apple knows they don’t need word-of-mouth hype, given that their brand is a household name).
In contrast, the OnePlus page features a press snippet from The Verge praising the OnePlus 9Pro positioned above the fold in easy view. It also features more press reviews from credible sources as you scroll down. They also offer “10% OFF on OnePlus Accessories” as a reward for subscribing to the brand.
Test your page’s narrative based on your value propositions, use cases, and brand recognition.
Layout
Page layout plays a significant role in how audiences react to your landing page.
Each audience segment needs to receive information in a priority which is ideal for their buying patterns.
Otherwise, they might leave your page before giving your offer a fair shot. For example, TestGorilla uses a page layout that emphasizes credibility and social proof for audiences unfamiliar with the platform.
The page puts focus on trust badges, customer count, and customer badges to get visitors to watch a video about the platform, then get started.
For audiences who are comparing platforms with TestGorilla, the brand sends users to a page that compares them to their top competitor, Codility. The page layout makes a comprehensive comparison between the two platforms and showcases why TestGorilla is the better choice.
The conversion goal is the same on both pages—to convince people to start using TestGorilla. But the page layout and narrative are different, meant for two separate audiences.
Use personalized experiences for better ad returns
Creating one-size-fits-all campaigns isn’t as effective as using a precise and relevant approach to get specific audiences to perform a conversion action.
To achieve higher returns on ad spend, it is essential to define micro-audiences and create personalized experiences meant only for them.
Confused about where to start with personalization? Consider Instapage.
With the Instapage Personalization solution, marketers can create, optimize and personalize advertising post-click experiences as quickly and efficiently as they do ads.
You can:
- Create unlimited unique audience experiences for each landing page
- Test audience experiences and variations to optimize for conversions
- Dynamically pair visitor intent to a relevant post-click landing page for each ad
- Match copy to visitor-level data like keywords, firmographics, and demographics
Leverage advertising audience data through 1:1 personalization to maximize conversions, not just clicks. Start with Instapage now—sign up for the demo here.
