Think of online marketing as an iceberg:
Icebergs have two part: (1) the part you can see above the water (2) the substantially larger part hidden beneath the water.
Marketing to a group of people based on behavior and demographic information, or Audience Segmentation, is the ice that is visible at the waterline. It is useful in that it is a smaller chunk of ice than the glacier it fell off, but it is does nothing to depict the true mass and depth of the full iceberg.
IP Targeting is the section beneath the water; it is the nitty gritty depth of information that comes with knowing exactly who you are addressing. An IP address is connected to every computer on the Internet, and the location information of that IP address can be collected, stored, and analyzed to give you all the necessary information you need to create a personalized advertisement for that individual or business. Feeling confused?
Let’s break it down:
If you are a college looking to recruit students, you might use Audience Segmentation to target the demographics of typical students. You reach your target audience…but you are probably also reaching a lot of other people that don’t need or want your message and you might be missing other people in different demographics. However, with IP Targeting you can advertise directly to the IP addresses of people that meet your target audience parameters. You provide the addresses, zip codes, and names of these people and an IP Mapping System matches those physical entities with their IP addresses. So, the college can actual send out an advertisement to the IP addresses of any high school student, any household with a student, and even the IP address of the high schools. This means you have taken the top of the iceberg, where you market more broadly to groups of people sharing demographic or behavioral similarities, and you have submerged yourself to market more directly to individuals, households, or specific businesses.
See the appeal?
Instead of marketing to a group of people that share similarities, like age, location, gender, and so on, you can now directly target the exact audience you want to advertise to in true one-to-one fashion. No longer do you have to waste money blindly targeting large, complex groups. With IP Targeting, you can focus on razor-sharp, personalized marketing.
Here’s the 5 bullets you need to remember about IP Marketing:
1. You can save money: No longer wasting money on poorly targeted advertising campaigns, now you specifically target the IP addresses you want to reach
2. You can get personal: You know EXACTLY who you are talking to, so you can customize your message
3. You can adjust: By tracking engagements, you can easily see how the campaign is doing and adapt
4. You can eliminate the cold call: Using IP Tracking allows you to run an advertising campaign directed to your target audience, then provide follow-up sales instead of cold-calling potential clients and going in blind
5. You can enhance B2B and B2C campaigns: IP Tracking is versatile and can be used to increase specificity in both B2B and B2C campaigns
Lindy Chaffin Start is principal and creative director at Unstoppable Start Studios based in Atlanta, Georgia. She contributes her knowing and talents as a marketer to small businesses across the country and listeners around the world.
To learn more about IP targeting, contact us.