Have you ever been searching for something online and shortly after noticed ads about what you were looking for when doing other searches, or when visiting other websites? Those are called Hyper Targeting ads. Recently one of our Toronto office space for lease clients commented that he was looking up the statistics on a particular car for a family member and within a few days, he was seeing ads for that car when he visited some of his favourite websites. This was not a coincidence! The information was collected and sold by the site he had visited and searched, so that advertisers could mine that data and come up with a strategy to deliver ads specific to him.
Some are saying that “Big Data” means less work for “Mad Men!” Yes, it is not just the name of a TV show, but the nickname given to those on the creative side of the advertising business. While there is still a need for creative people in advertising, the true big money producers in the advertising game will be the guys who analyze data and feed the pitches to the creative people to make the advertisements.
Most of our readers are not big business types or in the advertising game, because our office space and virtual office Toronto customers are in the growing stages of their businesses. So why talk about “Big Data” and “Hyper Targeting?” Because you do not need to own large amounts of data to be able to cash in and benefit from it. Entrepreneurs and small businesses can start exploiting many of the same data points that those corporate giants have access to with a few keystrokes. The goal here is to uncover buying patterns and relationships that were previously too costly to extract without a team of data analysts.
One of the most simple and cost-effective ways for small businesses to tap into the power of big data is to do some inexpensive ads on social media sites and hyper target their ideal customer. With pay per click, you only pay for the clicks you get from people you have targeted to see your ads. If you were an office business centre looking for customers who wanted Toronto office space or a Toronto virtual office, you would target only people who live in Toronto and only people who are in a managerial or owner role of a small business that has done previous internet searches for office space or virtual office solutions. From there you can often do more filtering and more targeting. Granted, less people may see your ad, but the ones who do see the ad are more likely to click on it and contact you.