Why Does Microtargeting Work?

Marketing Viewpoint by Ruth Winett

Why Does Microtargeting Work?
Reaching "Swayable" Subsegments

One Size Does Not Fit All

How did President Trump’s campaign attract disenchanted Black, Latino, women, and young male voters in 2024? Learning from President Obama’s successful 2008 campaign, the 2024 Trump campaign tried microtargeting. Microtargeting is a way for businesses and campaigns to use data and technology to divide market (or voting) segments into smaller subgroups with similar interests and then develop different strategies and content for each subgroup.

To conserve campaign funds, Trump strategists focused on reaching the 14% of battleground voters deemed to be “swayable.” Then, they reached these voters with targeted messages delivered through the voters’ streaming services. This was possible because streaming services provide advertisers with customer data. In contrast, the Harris campaign unsuccessfully targeted all voters in battleground states with costly TV ads-- even voters who had already decided to vote for Trump, according to the New York Times.

What Does Microtargeting Require?

Marketers and political campaign staff have long segmented their prospects and voters into segments with similar characteristics. However, segmenting geographically or by gender or wealth is no longer sufficient. Successful microtargeting requires expertise in data collection and analysis, digital technology, and marketing.

Microtargeting = Data + Analysis + Strategy + Targeted Communications

Granular customer data is essential. Data may come from online research; customer interviews, chat messages and customer service requests; social media; and published articles and reports. Other sources include case studies and testimonials, browsing and purchasing information, plus customers’ responses to marketing messages and campaigns. Data analysts then integrate data from these various sources, analyze the data, and recommend strategies for reaching subsegments.

Microtargeting is also applicable in other contexts: For example, clinicians studied the electronic medical records (EMRs) of 11,210 patients and identified 2,551 with Type 2 Diabetes. They divided the Type 2 Diabetics into three distinct subgroups, each associated with other complications or diseases. These new findings suggest better ways to manage the disease. Additionally, researchers developed methods that can be used to study other diseases, according to an NIH article.

Microtargeting is a more effective way for businesses to reach customers. However, microtargeting requires new ways to collect and conflate granular data, data analysts to interpret the data, marketers to create targeted campaigns and messages for each subgroup, and technologists to troll for data and mount social media and other digital campaigns. But, before collecting data companies should develop guardrails for protecting customers’ privacy.

Sources:

“2024: The ‘Device ID’ Election,” Jamie Manning, The Wall Street Journal, 1/3/5

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/05/us/politics/trump-streaming-ads-strategy.html

https://www.techtarget.com/searchcio/definition/microtargeting

https://fourweekmba.com/microtargeting/

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4780757/#: “Identification of type 2 diabetes subgroups through topological analysis of patient similarity,”

Market Insights

For Email Marketing you can trust

articles index | home | back