Targeted TV advertising is a beneficial way to reach the right B2B customers with your brand message. It involves in-depth target audience knowledge and understanding, using that insight to personalize your message and its delivery.  

This has become an increasingly important tactic to incorporate in your ads today. The benefits of targeted TV are that it maximizes your ad spend and ensures you're reaching the right people with your message. According to SurveyMonkey, people trust TV ads more than other marketing channels. However, additional research found that 92% of people ignore some type of ad a day, and at least 37% of Americans ignore television ads in particular. This is often due to ads being irrelevant to the viewer, and therefore, not worth their time to sit through.    

To ensure your TV advertising is maximized and more effective, here's how TV ads target consumers and how you can take advantage.  

Traditional TV ads vs. Connected TV ads  

Traditional linear TV is known for its 90% reach among adults in the United States, making it effective for getting your brand message in front of as many people as possible. Traditional TV ads often align with this known fact, generally speaking to as many of your ideal targeted as possible in a single message. This can make it challenging to target specific audiences in specific stages of their buyer journey. 

Targeted or connected TV (CTV) ads work a little differently, as they can be backed by consumer data and delivered to specific viewers. Research shows that most (78%) consumers in the United States are using a subscription video-on-demand service (i.e., Netflix, Hulu, Disney Plus, Amazon Prime Video, etc.) in 2021, with 55% of households subscribing to more than one platform (up from 43% in 2018 and 20% in 2015).  

This gives B2B companies an exceptional opportunity to reach influential people in many relevant businesses. OTT/CTV ads are crafted with specific target audience data and segmentation in mind and then tracked, measured, and adjusted according to performance results. This means you may have one general message to get to your audience, but it will be tweaked and segmented by the viewer, their buyer journey, and their prior exposure to your brand.   

How to Identify and Target Clients   

Knowing your target audience allows you to add more personalization and relevance to your TV ads. After all, you will only know what to say, how to say it, where to say it, and who to say it to when you know who your ideal clients are.  

You can identify your target audience in the following ways: 

• Examine your current customer base through reviews, feedback, surveys, and even social media engagements like comments and tags. Your current customers are your ideal customers, and therefore, are the best representation of your target audience. 
• Check out the competition by evaluating who they're speaking to, how their customers are responding, and other behaviors that may be useful.  

• Partner with a research company or another organization to further define your audience and combine/narrow down data.   

With the research you obtain, you can make personas of your ideal clients to guide your TV ad messages and delivery. LinkedIn suggests 3 to 8, but that number should start low initially to ensure you're being as detailed and specific as possible and grow from there.   

You can target clients through targeted TV ads by incorporating relevant tactics into your message using this insight. For instance, if the viewer has been exposed to your brand many times (CTV data can give you this insight), they may move into the consideration stage of their buyer journey, where they require more valuable insight from your brand to put you top-of-mind.  

It's also important to note that having this data on hand is essential to ensuring that you're not delivering the same ad to the same viewer too many times, causing ad fatigue and annoyance that will impact your brand negatively.  

How Target TV Ads Help Your B2B Company  

TV ad targeting helps your B2B company get its message to more relevant audiences and less irrelevant audiences. More often than not, marketers spend too much time sending their messages to people who have no interest in their brand or offer or send the wrong message to the right people. 

When you target your TV ads to the right people in the right buyer journey, you maximize your potential for a sale and build stronger connections with clients by showing you know them and the value your product/services can bring to their business.  

Take, for instance, a business in the auto industry. Ad targeting can allow a company to advertise different cars to different viewers, depending on their demographics, interests, buyer behaviors, family size, etc.  

Another example is a politician who can use ad targeting to segment voters and target them with ads that speak to causes that are more relevant and important to them. An older segment may see more messages about retirement and associated laws, while a younger generation may be more interested in what politicians have planned for a better economy.    

As a B2B company, you can use your target audience to guide your message, what message is delivered, and when it’s shown to them (i.e., if they work 9 to 5, then early in the morning or later in the evening may be more successful). 

Getting Started On Your First Of Many Targeted TV Ad Campaigns 

By now, it's essential to not only personalize your messages to the right audience but use tracking and measuring to inform your targeting efforts. Many moving parts can play into developing and executing a targeted TV ad campaign correctly, including accurate data, clearly defined branding, target audience insight, and much more. 

Working with a media partner for targeted TV ad campaigns can help reduce the trial and error of obtaining and using consumer data to target your audience. They can also be the ideal experts to consult for experience and expertise on best practices that are substantially more efficient.