Narrowcasting is the name of the process in which a specific audience segment is targeted with tailored content. The core purpose of narrowcasting is to increase the return on investment (ROI) of your marketing efforts by presenting content that is highly personalised, limiting access to such content, or both.
With narrowcasting, you can use industry-specific jargon and reach potential customers that already have a high purchasing intent, allowing you to demonstrate your expertise, pre-qualify leads, and get the most out of your content.
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What’s the Difference Between Narrowcasting and Broadcasting?
As its name suggests, broadcasting is the process through which information or content is shared on a broad scale. A television ad is an excellent example. If you run a TV ad on a national channel, anyone and everyone will see your content. However, despite the fact that you will undoubtedly reach a few prospective customers, most viewers likely won’t have any interest in your products or services.
You can look at narrowcasting as a quality-over-quantity strategy. Instead of attempting to get your content in front of tens of thousands of viewers, you focus instead on a few hundred to a few thousand high-quality prospects that are much more likely to convert. When used strategically, narrowcasting can deliver an excellent ROI and exceptional conversion rate.
How Does Narrowcasting Work?
Narrowcasting is a relatively straightforward process. First, you must determine who you want to target. If you already have a clearly-defined audience, select a niche within it to target. You can use a variety of criteria to select your niche, including age, location, gender, and interests.
From there, select your medium. Some common options include digital signage displays, geo-targeted ads on search engines, or mailing lists. Once you know who you want to target and how you intend to reach them, you need top-quality content. Targeting the ideal audience via the best medium with captivating content is the recipe for narrowcasting success.
Examples of Narrowcasting
There are plenty of different tools and channels available for narrowcasting, the three most popular are as follows:
Digital Signage
Using digital signage software and screens to connect with niche audiences is one of the most common and versatile form of narrowcasting. Digital signage software lets you deploy specific content to your screens, kiosks and podiums in specific locations. This ensures the right content is seen by the right audiences, even if this varies within the same building.
Narrowcasting with digital signage is commonly used for commercial or informational purposes. For example:
- Advertising e.g flash sale promotions
- Internal communications e.g KPI dashboards or department-specific updates and announcements
- Visitor messaging e.g welcome screens
- Healthcare e.g waiting area displays
- Retail e.g product-specific information in display zones or at the point-of-sale
- Out-of-home e.g programmatic displays or digital billboards
Mailing List
Creating custom email lists and then segmenting your audience based on unique preferences or needs is another great way to narrowcast your content. You can use mailing lists to target past customers, reach out to prospects who abandoned their carts, or nurture leads.
When running mailing list narrowcasting campaigns, make sure not to inundate your audience with messages. While you want to message them enough to keep your brand top of mind, they may unsubscribe if you overload them.
Geo-Targeted Advertising
Geo-targeted advertising targets consumers based on their geographical location. It is an effective tactic when you want to break into a new market or reach a very specific audience.
For instance, let’s say that you are a local services provider and want to start offering services in the adjacent city. A geo-targeted advertising campaign will promote awareness about your services and help you gain traction in the new market.
Advantages of Narrowcasting
Narrowcasting offers many advantages over broadcasting, including the following:
Audience Targeting
Broadcasting does not allow you to target niche audience segments. Instead, you must attempt to get your content in front of as many people as possible at once in hopes that some small percentage of them will contact your company or make a purchase.
Conversely, narrowcasting allows you to tailor your content to specific audiences by displaying materials in focused locations. Targeting audiences with curated content increases its impactfulness, reduces marketing waste, and enables you to generate high-quality leads.
Content Formats
Narrowcasting gives you the freedom to leverage a wide array of content formats. For instance, you can target consumers with written, email-based content or run banner ads based on their geographical location. Alternatively, you can use digital signage to target audiences with captivating videos and images.
A well-designed narrowcasting campaign will incorporate multiple content formats. For instance, you may use videos, images, QR codes (which can also be displayed via digital signage), and written content.
Cost-Effectiveness
One of the most appealing aspects of narrowcasting is its cost-effectiveness. Whereas a national TV ad may cost tens of thousands of pounds, running content on digital signs can cost as little as a few hundred. In addition, due to the scalability and cost-effectiveness of narrowcasting, you can keep your marketing expenses in check while also testing various ad content in multiple markets.
Better Engagement and Conversions
Narrowcasting is a great way of boosting engagement and conversion rates. Since you are focusing on a specific audience, you can present them with more relevant content that aligns with their interests, needs, and hobbies.
Boosting engagement with narrowcasting can transform your next marketing campaign into your most successful one yet.
Narrowcasting With TrouDigital Digital Signage Software
While there are many different ways to weave narrowcasting into your brand-building strategy, digital signage is by far one of the most impactful. If you would like some tips to jumpstart your journey, check out a list of digital signage content ideas.
With the TrouDigital platform, narrowcasting content is easy and intuitive. Our drag-and-drop studio lets you create highly-personalised, eye-catching content with text, images or videos by simply dragging and dropping the element you need on to one canvas.
Once created, you can schedule the content to play on your screens when and where you need it to. You can manage the content being displayed on each individual screen, all from one central dashboard. For more information and support, contact out team!
