Reaching Your Ultimate Buyer with Social Media Data Retargeting

Attendees on Day 1 of the Marketing Analytics & Data Science conference learned more about data-driven social media as Leslie Drate, US Consumer Print Social Media at HP, Inc. presented "Social Media Data Retargeting."

Acorrding to Leslie, targeting is good, but retargeting allows you to focus marketing dollars and brand messenging on a specific target audience that is more likely to buy from you than other audiences.

Retargeting is more affordable, efficient and effective. You can retarget on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube around these parameters:
- Location: country, state, zip code, or even the area around your house
- Demographics: age, gender, interests, languages
- Interest: hundreds of categories including music, movies, sports, games, shopping, etc.
- Behaviors: things they do, like shopping behavior, type of phone they use, or if they are looking to buy a car or house

To retarget to custom or tailored audiences:
- Target ads to people on your contact list
- Facebook or Twitter compares your data with theirs to find the people in their database
- Use a customer list or data from your website
- The information is encrypted to protect customer relationships (or use a third-party data warehouse)

Leslie also talked about pixel data on Facebook and Twitter to target visitors to specific pages. Here's how it works:
- Place a pixel on key web pages
- Buid audiences you can target on social media
- Track conversions

In sequential social media marketing, it's important to develop content and messaging that moves the audience through the journey cross-device, cross-platform and through customized creative by platform and target audience.

The way you reach across platforms is also important. Leslie explained that when you reach someone with a digital video message, you should follow that up with a display ad to reach them on a PC and reach them again on mobile.

Leslie recommended retargeting as a way to stay one step ahead in your social media efforts. Stay connected for more insights and conference highlights at #MADSCONF.