Are you to trying to reach niche audiences for your company or school district?

Are you having trouble determining where to start to target those like-minded individuals? Have you considered using conferences as an event to target audiences using social media?

In this article, I will discuss how to hyper-target niche audiences at industry conferences using Facebook and Instagram advertising.

Hyper-Target Conference Audiences Using Facebook Ads

As of December 2018, Facebook has over two billion active users on its platform. The fast-growing, Facebook owned Instagram has close to one billion active users in its community.

Both Facebook and Instagram offer incredible options to target these users with advertising. There are thousands of combinations using demographics, interests, behaviors and life events to reach your organization’s niche audience.

Click Here to Download WordStream’s Facebook Ad Targeting Cheat Sheet

The Death of Traditional Advertising

Traditional marketing is dying a slow death. With increased competition in public education, school districts must use innovative approaches to market their schools and programs.

Billboards, Radio Ads and Newspapers are not going to cut it. Digital marketing might be the only hope for cash conscious school districts.

This is why it is crucial for small businesses and school districts to explore targeting through social media. And with organic reach shrinking on a daily basis, it will be a pay to play world for most organizations going forward.

What is Hyper-Targeting?

Gone our the days of buying a traditional advertisement such as a newspaper ad hoping to reach your targeted audience. It’s like throwing spaghetti against a wall. You might hit some of your target, but you are going to waste a lot of sauce (money) in the process. It’s also going to be an extremely messy process.

This is why using digital marketing, including social media to reach a defined audience, is your best option going forward. It is a better return on your investment, and will help you reach your desired market.

According to Wikipedia, Hyper-Targeting refers to the ability to deliver advertising content to specific interest-based segments in a network. MySpace actually coined the phrase in November 2007. They described it on their website as “enabling online marketers to tap into self-expressed user information to target campaigns like never before.” 

In 2018, Facebook and Instagram give you the best ability to target audiences like never before. Sorry MySpace…

Defining Your Niche Audience

Knowing your audience is crucial to deliver the best possible content on the best possible platform.

Social media thrives when you figure out your audience personas. By knowing your audience you can deliver personalized content that will make the biggest impact with your audience.

Research your audience. Talk with your audience. Know everything possible about your audience.

And what better place to know where your audience will be then at their industry conferences.

Using Facebook & Instagram Ads to Target Conferences

As mentioned above, both Facebook and Instagram offer incredible options to target their billions of users. There are thousands of combinations using demographics, interests, behaviors and life events to reach your niche audience.

Using a location such as conference to know where your audience will be will take the guess work out of targeting your niche. It will also save you a bunch of money.

Instead of hyper-targeting your audience using multiple ads in multiple towns, you can use one or two ads and target your niche at a conference you know they will be at.

For example, a company like Blackboard might target the Annual NSPRA conference in Washington D.C. this year. They know exactly where almost 1,000 school communicators will be in July. They can create an ad, and then hyper-target the conference hotel and create brand awareness for a new product or feature.

Example of Targeting Through Facebook [INFOGRAPHIC]

Let’s use the Blackboard example from above. What if we want to reach school communicators at their national convention in Washington D.C. What could we do?

You can see from the infographic above that we have options when reaching our audience. Everything from location to travel habits can be targeted.

• You have options to target Everyone in this Location – People Recently in this Location – People Who Live in this Location. I chose “Everyone in this Location” because they are traveling, and during a conference they will be staying in one specific location.
• A great next option is Age and Gender. I selected people “aged 24 and older” because we are dealing with white-collar professionals and chose “All” when it comes to gender. NSPRA have both male and female members.
• With education level I chose “College Graduate” because 99% of school communicators hold some type of professional degree.
• For job title you can choose Public Relations or Communications or Both. This option can be a bit confusing since their are so many titles in our industry. You can not select this as an option to be safe.
• I definitely chose “Education” as an industry because our organization is very niche. This is a great way to narrow down your audience.
• The next two options are great for targeting conference goers. There are options to choose “Away from Hometown” and “Currently Traveling” What a great way to hyper-target conference attendees.

Using Content Marketing in Your Ads

This works really well with Content Marketing. Offer an eBook or “How to Guide” your audience can download through a landing page. You can hyper-target conference goers to download the lead magnet using social media ads and get them to sign-up for your eNewsletter.

When they sign-up, send them a thank you email with a coupon to collect free swag at your conference booth. This way you can reach them through digital, and then get the opportunity to meet them face-to-face as well.

Conclusion

Conferences are a great way to hyper-target a group or audience. Knowing where thousands of individuals will be at a certain time is highly advantageous. It takes much of the guess work about location. And with the sophisticated ad platform Facebook offers, you can drill down and reach a very defined audience.

Do you have questions about hyper-targeting audiences using social media? Leave your questions in the comment section below.