As I discussed in How to Drive Growth by Correctly Targeting Traffic at its highest level, brand awareness can be divided into traffic that you attract, rent, or own. In this post, we’ll focus on 6 marketing channels that will rent you access to their audience.
Since I always find it helpful to review a list of options, today I want to cover six of 12 powerful marketing channels that essentially rent you their audience so you can market to them. In a follow-up post, we will look at the six remaining marketing channels that rent you access to their audience.
When you rent access to an audience, essentially, you have to pay someone to get access to their audience. When you rent access to their audience, you do not own the contact and are often interrupting the prospect to deliver your message. Depending on the marketing channel, you as the advertiser are sometimes viewed as an annoyance since you are interrupting them from their chosen activity. That said, many online organizations that rent you access to their audience are good at determining the relevance of your product or service to their desires, so the hope is that the advertisement comes as a welcome message as if you were reading their mind.
When it comes to using one of the online channels you can rent access to, it is best to send the prospect to a squeeze page where you can exchange some free information in exchange for their content information. Once you have captured the prospects contact information, you can use one of your owned channels to communicate with them for free going forward.
Here is a list of the first six of 12 marketing channels where you can rent access to an audience for a fee.
Social Media ads
Nearly every social media platform captures information about its users and then offers businesses the ability to target ads to them. Ads can be billed based on just the number of impressions (displaying your brand message only to a prospect), or based on click-throughs to a home page, landing page, or squeeze page where billing occurs only when the prospect clicks on an ad.
Print ads
Magazines tend to be more targeted based on their content. Bow Hunter magazine by its nature attracts bow hunters but are national in scope. Newspapers, on the other hand, are local in scope but are not well targeted to a particular buyer. This channel also includes inserts, which are blow-in cards, which are added to magazines, newspapers and other publications and can be customized based on geography.
Display ads
Everything from yard signs to highway billboards constitute what I will call display ads mostly placed along roadways. When this is the case, the message needs to be very brief as drivers have little time to absorb the message as they drive by. Display ads can work better when the driver can digest the ad such as when their vehicle is stopped at a street light or waiting at a bus stop.
When it comes to broadcast media a subtler form of paid promotion comes in the form of product placements. The movie ET did wonders for Skittles sales, and the movie The Italian Job helped elevate the Mini Cooper brand. Generally, product placements are reserved for larger brands but small business owners often can provide vloggers with their products to use as a way to get their product seen by a much wider audience.
Kiosk/Events
A mobile kiosk or a table at an expo or similar type of event can expose your brand to a new audience. To make the best use of expos and events, be sure to have promotional items as giveaways.
Sponsorships
Many sports teams receive support through the use of sponsorships. Be it a little league baseball team by a local retailer or NASCAR, sponsorships by a national brand, sponsorships get your name in front of the events fans.
How can you incorporate more of the six marketing channels where you can rent access to an audience to drive more prospects to your business?
