Cross-platform audience targeting links signals from several devices or channels so advertisers can coordinate messages and measurement. The method can use signed-in data, device identifiers or statistical models, subject to platform rules and privacy law.
Customers move between phones, computers, connected televisions and apps during a typical day. Cross-platform targeting tries to recognise those touchpoints so a campaign can control repetition and measure a journey across more than one device.
While social media platforms and mobile devices are obvious, there are other platforms, such as streaming services, mobile apps, smart TVs, and game consoles that you might typically overlook. To maximize your impact on your target audience, you need to ensure you have strategies in place to reach your customers on every device.
Cross-device marketing or cross-device targeting refers to a brand’s strategy to target users on several platforms. The key to implementing this strategy effectively is to understand your audience to ensure you know which platforms they prefer and which ones they don’t, thereby maximizing conversions and your return on investment.
Cross-device marketing is an effective marketing strategy, provided you know how to implement it. Here’s what you need to do:
Know your audience
As mentioned above, the key to succeeding with this strategy is to know your audience inside out. Before you start a new campaign or take any kind of action, you need to use whatever information you have available to evaluate and identify your target audience.
It’s quite likely that your target audience will vary from campaign to campaign or even channel to channel. Hence, it’s vital to know exactly who you’re targeting, otherwise your efforts will go to waste.
Prioritize platform experiences
You can’t devote your efforts to all platforms equally. You need to prioritize your chosen platforms according to which ones are the most important and effective for your target audience. This ranking will vary according to your industry, as well as your target audience so you need to ensure you plan this carefully to maximize conversion and engagement.
Get creative
While you can repurpose your campaigns across different platforms, it’s still important to tweak and customize it to ensure it suits the different platforms you’ve chosen. For instance, if you’re opting for mobile devices, then you need to ensure the images are optimized to be viewed on a smaller screen.
Hence, it’s vital to ensure you’re investing the time and resources required to create something unique. Each device offers a unique experience so you need to keep this in mind and create content that’s suited to this.
Write or develop your story
With competition as intense as it is today, it’s important for brands to master the art of storytelling. The same concept applies to cross-device marketing to ensure you’re telling your audience a story across different platforms.
Before the campaign goes live, it’s important to develop and plan the story to ensure you’ve taken into account all the different elements and triggers that will affect your target audience. Paying attention to the minor details will help you create highly engaging marketing campaigns that are extremely targeted.
Track and automate
The last step is to ensure that your analytics, automation, and tracking tools are in place so you can monitor conversions, ad performance, and engagements, amongst other metrics. You need to track the success of your marketing campaigns to ensure your investment’s in the right place. Tracking these metrics will help you understand which platforms are working more effectively and which ones aren’t worth investing into again.
Conclusion
Marketers should start with observed audience behaviour and a clear reason to link devices. The resulting match remains an estimate unless a user signs in across platforms. Campaign reports should show that uncertainty and respect the consent rules that apply to the data.
Accuracy and consent set the limits
Device matching can produce false links when several people share a device or one person uses separate accounts. Marketers should define which data supports the match, obtain the required consent and avoid treating an inferred identity as certain. Measure reach and conversion without collecting more personal data than the campaign needs.
