Rent-An-Audience: Finding and Activating Third Party Audiences

When you're brand new, you’re invisible. When people do hear about you, some of them will care about knowing you. Some will care deeply. Others won’t give you a second thought.

Even if you're destined for unrelenting success, at first you’ll need to figure out where and how to reach the people who are going to care, because they're the people who will fuel your growth.

Fortunately, others in your industry have built audiences full of the people you need to reach. Even if you're creating something entirely new and unique, someone in an adjacent niche will have built an audience full of folks who will care.

You can rent them! It is truly as straighforward as it sounds. You can pay for visibility among a third-party audience - advertise at them, and do it affordably. When you do it, you have a chance to make the third party audience your own by converting them into subscribers, downloaders, or customers.

A third-party audience is a group of potential customers defined by data collected by another company; such as a publisher, social network, search engine, or advertiser. This data can include demographics (age, location), interests, and indicators of intent gathered from online behaviors (articles read, social media posts, influencers followed, etc.). As we said above, you can leverage that data to access these audiences, targeting your advertising and marketing efforts, and spending your time and budget more efficiently.

Third-party audiences live at the core of traditional advertising practices.

Here’s the concept plainly: If you knew that the people who will be interested in your product will watch a particular TV program or read a magazine, you would buy ad time or space during that program or in that magazine in order to reach that relevant audience. Simple! (Not so simple.)

Modernize the concept from those traditional channels into those from today and consider this: If you know that the members of your business’ audience read a particular newsletter every morning, or that they visit the same website every day, or maybe they all watch the same creators on YouTube, Instagram, or TikTok, then buy a presence there. Make a timely investment in promoting a message that is authentic to your brand, and relevant to your audience, and turn these pre-existing audiences into your audiences.

Here's how you can identify, assess, and activate third party audiences so that you can make their members your own:

1. Identify relevant publications:

• Industry publications: Look for online publications, magazines, or newsletters focused on your specific industry or niche. Thanks to the Internet, every conceivable topic now has dozens of websites, blogs, forums, magazines, YouTubers, TikTok accounts, and other channels dedicated to telling their audiences all about it.

  • Do searches across channels using your keyword list in order to find out which outlets, influencers, and competitors cover topics that are relevant to your offerings.

• Become familiar with the publications, forums, blogs, and other businesses that you find there, and list them.

• Explore their newsletters, blogs, and other creative content to ensure that your brand fits into the context of theirs, and that their audience engages with the product or services that you’re going to offer to them.

• When you’ve found relevant associations and organizations, dig into their membership directories to get a more complete sense of the types of members they serve. Consider the member’s goals in your ads.

• Social media communities: Identify online groups, forums, or social media pages where your ideal audience actively engages. Audience targeting is incredibly rich on social media and, with a clear idea of your target prospect and smart keyword list, you can reach them with remarkable accuracy

• Search social platforms using your trusty keyword list to identify relevant hashtags to earn greater visibility for your organic content to see how they may affect paid efforts

• Open accounts or build profiles for your business as your business on social networks. Get comfortable with the basics of their advertising platforms.

• Build an organic presence anywhere you’ve built a profile by posting brand-defining content before you activate an ad campaign. Users will visit your profile to verify that you’re legit.

• Don’t forget to explore Reddit. Like the other platforms, you can test it cheap and reach a targeted audience that’s already looking for a distraction

• Influencer marketing: Partner with influencers who have established credibility within your target audience. Invest in influencers who have a proven track record of driving qualified prospects and conversions (sales, signups, downloads, etc.)

• Turn yet again to your keyword list and search across platforms to find influencers and accounts that speak to your audience.

• Watch organic and paid content on the channels that you find. Make sure that their content feels relevant to your brand, and that your product or service will feel relevant to their audience.

• Use a tool like SparkToro, Sprout, or an AI-powered tool like CreatorIQ to find influencers that will offer you the best audience fit and the highest engagement rates.

• Be prepared to educate your influencer partners about your brand, your products and services, and tell them exactly how your want them to promote you to their audience (in their own style).

• Partner with an influencer agency to take the legwork out of your influencer identification and activation efforts if you’ve got the budget for it.

2. Analyze audience demographics:

• Many publications provide information about their reader base, including demographics and interests. 

• Download their media kit, explore the different ad formats and targeting options that each publication offers.

• Review advertising formats, channels, and inventory.

• Visit their websites, subscribe to their newsletters, and review their social media pages to see examples of how they display advertisements

• Explore the ads that other marketers are publishing among these audiences. Visit landing pages and watch videos to get a sense of how others are taking part in the commercial conversations there.

• Social media insights and analytics tools can reveal audience characteristics for groups and communities.

• Explore targeting tools. Most platforms allow you to plan a campaign without spending a penny!

• Your keyword list will come in handy here, too!

• Analyze how and where others in your industry are reaching their audience.

• Review the data available in your research tools to determine what kind of performance you might expect in return for your investments.

• Be prepared to acknowledge that you don’t need to be present on every social media channel. If, for any reason, your brand isn’t an ideal fit for a particular channel, skip it.

• Influencer identification tools, like the one mentioned above, also enable you to find and review prospective influencers based on a keyword search, making it simple to find relevant personalities who can present your offerings with aplomb.

• Explore their social media presence to ensure that it will reflect on your brand in positive ways.

• Use your tools to investigate an influencer’s engagement rates. Reviewing how many likes, comments, or shares a creator gets per post is a strong indicator of how your work with them will perform.

• Identify which subjects, designs, styles, or content types drive the most engagement there.

• Consider which content subjects and formats perform well, and dedicate yourself to creating smart content that follows a similar format.

3. Reach out for collaboration:

• Contact the publisher: Inquire about advertising opportunities within their publications (e.g., sponsored content, banner ads, newsletter placements, social media features). This can be an issue for introverts. If doing this makes you uncomfortable, good! Grow with it.

• Partner with community moderators: Explore options for guest posts, discussions, or sponsored events within relevant online communities. Many moderators are busy, but they’ll all pay attention to opportunities to drive revenue, so include your intentions in the subject line of your emails to them. Something like “Looking for ad space.” “Interested in reaching your audience,” will get their attention.

• Activate your social advertisements: It’s amazing how simple and powerful the advertising tools are on social media networks. You should feel comfortable starting with small budgets to test creative messaging, promotional offers, creative styles, or ad designs economically.

• Collaborate with influencers: Negotiate sponsored content creation, product reviews, or social media mentions to leverage their audience reach. You can usually reach influencers directly through the platforms they operate on with a simple DM. Some work with agencies, and they’ll connect you to their team in order to discuss costs and to work out next steps in developing a campaign.

Any time you’re buying advertising, no matter the channel or format, always remember:

• Content quality matters enormously

  • Ensure your message aligns with the publication's editorial style and audience interests.

  • Develop content for each of your audience segments, so that you’re presenting relevant information to them.

  • Dedicate yourself to developing a reliable, repeatable look in your ads so that your brand is easier to recall, but

  • Test your creative by changing messages, offers and promotions, calls to actions, and various uses of your brand colors.

• Transparency leads to trust

  • Clearly disclose any sponsored content or collaborations.

  • Ensure that your creative doesn’t oversell your offerings or represent your products in unreasonable terms.

  • Speak to the needs and desires of the audience you’re targeting.

• Maximize every opportunity to define your offering and present your value proposition

  • Focus on providing valuable insights or solutions that resonate with the audience.

  • Present your product or services’ features clearly, then

  • Explain the attributes of those features, so you can

  • Express fully the benefits of your product or services creatively and persuasively!

  • Offer promotions, but don’t be overly eager to undervalue or discount your offerings.

Launch your third party advertising campaigns properly, and you’ll be going to market with:

• Increased relevance: You directly target individuals who are already consuming content relevant to your client's offerings.

• Enhanced trust: The association with a trusted publication or influencer can add credibility to your message.

• Engaged audience: Readers actively seeking information within the platform are likely more receptive to relevant content. Convert them and they’ll be part of your audience as well!

Now, go find a great audience and get growing! If you want to talk about finding the right third party audience for your next campaign, make time here.