For any product or service, there is an audience out there that is looking for what you sell, and you’ve probably got a great marketing plan aimed at trying to convert them.

But what is often overlooked are the people who could be your perfect customers, but they’re not yet aware that they need your services. How do you reach them, let alone convert them? If you’ve never considered this before, we have good news. We’re about to share all the answers…

Passive Audience

In digital advertising, we say there are two types of audience. There’s the active audience that will be actively looking for products and services just like the ones you sell. That means they’re already in the market. You can grab their attention with contextual ads on relevant web pages, or run a PPC campaign to capture them when they’re searching for what you have to offer.

Then there is the passive audience. These are the people who match your customer profiles, but they don’t think they’re in the market for what you sell. You’re not on their radar at all, and they have no intention of looking for you. The fact is, though, they could still benefit from what you have to offer. And by expanding your marketing to explore the passive as well as the active audience, you are opening up a whole new world of opportunities. You could be doubling your reach, at least.

How To Reach The Passive Audience

There is no one size fits all approach here. You need to think carefully and think cleverly. These are people who aren’t looking for what you have to offer. So that means:

• You need to work out who they are and where they hang out
• You need to market to them when they’re in a relevant mindset
• You need creative that grabs attention
• You need very clear call to actions

Digital advertising is the perfect tool for doing all of this. Not only can you reach anyone who has internet access, but you can narrow it down to certain behaviours, you can create fantastic artwork, you can easily point them in the right direction of where to find out more, and it’s also all measurable and trackable.

Digital Advertising in Action

Because there is an abundance of ways that this could work for you, and there are numerous factors that you should consider, we thought it might be easier to share a case study to show you how it can work.

One of our most successful campaigns has been with the Practice Plus Group. They wanted to find candidates for hard to fill roles, and they were struggling to get applications. We knew we had to focus on the passive audience as well as the active audience if we were going to achieve the objectives. We had to do more than advertise to people who were already actively looking for jobs. We needed to get on the radar of people who weren’t actively looking.

Not only was this important for brand awareness, but these people might be convinced to change roles if the right opportunity came along. Utilising a geofencing tactic, we targeted a range of locations including hospitals, doctors surgeries, prisons and police stations - anywhere there would be a high percentage of nursing staff. We were able to be incredibly accurate with this, and we worked hard on the design of the ad and the call to action to ensure it spoke to people in the right context.

A nurse who was finishing a long shift and heading back to their car might not be actively looking for a new job, but the right message at the right time can make people think differently. This activity, coupled with the retargeting and PPC work we did to capture the active audience, drove thousands of people to the job page, and resulted in hundreds of applications.

What Could You Do?

As with anything in life, it’s not what you do, it’s how you do it. Success here always comes down to clever thinking. How could you optimise a tactic like geofencing to reach people that don’t currently know you exist? Is it time to think differently? Our Tips:

• Take some time to consider what sort of people make up your passive audience
• How could you find them? This could be at a specific geographical location or event, such as a music concert or – as in the Practice Plus
• Group case study – on their way home from work
• Factor in what their mindset will be like at the time you want to market to them, and decide how can you optimise on that
• In your ad design, how can you grab attention? What words will appeal at this time?
• Remember that brand awareness needs to come before conversion
• Decide what call to actions to use at different stages of your advertising. Storytelling can work very well

Want more inspiration? Take a look at our case study for Satellogic. They had a very niche audience and very specific goals, and our campaign was a huge success. At Fluid Ads, we offer a fully managed service, meaning we will come up with the clever ideas for you and run all your advertising. If that sounds of interest, contact our sales team and we can share more information.