[3] Tips to Maximize Your Budget by Improving Your Bank's Targeting

While I first wrote about defining your target market to stretch your marketing budget in late 2020, its underlying message has never been proven more true. As marketers, we continue to face economic challenges and are being asked to be smarter with our budgets. And it’s even possible that you’ve been asked to cut budgets or drive greater results with the same budgets.

Advantages of Improved Targeting

Targeting a specific audience connects you with the people most likely to form relationships with your bank. Efficient targeting prevents you from wasting resources on campaigns that might not reach the right audience. Once you define your bank’s audience, you can devote resources to attracting new customers and expanding relationships with existing ones.

How do I drive more results with less budget?

While there is no one perfect answer to this, in order to become smarter about who you are targeting you must consider who are you marketing.

(3) TIPS TO MAXIMIZE YOUR BANK'S BUDGET
BY IMPROVING YOUR TARGETING

Taking the time to understand your true audience can be challenging, but it ultimately is the best way to make the most of limited marketing budgets. Here are three steps to get you started:

1.   LOOK-ALIKE MODELS 

 Leverage look-alike models to expand relationships with current customers.

It’s important to identify your best, most profitable customers and understand the trends in their habits.

• What are their values?
• What products or services do they use?
• What was the order of purchasing those products or services?

Use that information to create a look-alike model to identify which of your other customers resemble your top patrons. This process will allow you to focus your budget on easier growth avenues, like converting existing customers to join the ranks of your best customers.

According to a study by Signal Mind, investing in current customers is six to seven times cheaper than acquiring new customers.

2. DATA APPENDS 

 Conduct data appends to acquire new customers.

Look-alike models can also help identify which prospects will most likely turn into customers so you can target fewer people with greater returns. In addition, this type of data append and analysis helps uncover market opportunities.

How does "data appends" work?

For example, we took a snapshot of a client's customers to gather demographic and behavioral information. In doing so we discovered that two key attributes — age and income — were instrumental in defining specific customers. We then used those attributes as data points to test and develop a targeted acquisition strategy for specific campaign marketing.

Similarly, you can use existing customer data to identify and target your best audience and then center your budget accordingly.

3. ANALYSIS

 Analyze previous campaigns.

Budget optimization of future campaigns goes beyond looking at how well your current targeting works. It often means diving deeper into past data to determine future predictors of success. For example:

• How does geography play a role in targeting and attracting new customers?
• Are you able to identify opportunities based on where the greatest number of new customers come from?
• Are there segments that drive more growth than others?

If this is the case, identifying look-alike(s) could mean targeting fewer people (which amounts to less spend), while improving overall results and growth.

KEY TAKEAWAY

For many marketers, tighter spending should translate into sharper targeting in 2023 and beyond. Spend time and resources to identify your true audience. Then, you can connect with the right consumers efficiently and see greater results.

Taking the time to understand your true audience can be a challenge, but it’s the best way to make the most of limited marketing budgets.

LOOK-ALIKE MODELS   |    DATA APPENDS   |    ANALYSIS

Interested in learning more?

BKM Marketing's content is made with our audience in mind. Our downloadable PDF guides are free
to save, search, share, reference, or print at their convenience. Visit our Resource Library to see more >>