Simpli.fi: An Introduction to Extreme Targeting for Small Businesses

Written by: Grant Ayers

Imagine this! You own a roofing company and can advertise to only everyone who has a home with an asphalt roof that is 20+ years old, in West Fargo and homes over $300,000 in value. What would be the best way to use targeted advertising?

Introducing Simpli.fi technology.

This billion-dollar tech company is one of the leaders in helping companies become more extreme about targeting when advertising.

Spotlight resells this technology to smaller businesses in our region. There are heavy overhead costs associated with doing this type of targeting on your own. If you were to go directly to Simpli.fi, the monthly commitment is over $30,000! Spotlight takes on that investment to help small businesses access the technology without such high fees.

The Overview

We found a technology called Simpli.fi that allows us to use very targeted technologies for our clients in the region. The technology is able to capture devices that have “Location Services” turned on, such as Google or the Weather app. If you have your location services turned on, Simpli.fi can target your device and allow us to serve advertisements to the person who owns that device. The ads show up where that person is browsing on the web or in apps. For instance, if you go to espn.com, you may see the ad that we are trying to serve you.

Step 1: Choose Geography

We can target people in a certain state, city, zip code or radius of a certain location. This data is obtained from city, state and national tax data, Oracle and credit card purchase history, as well as other large data aggregators.

This technology can geofence around a certain location as detailed as a specific building!

Step 2: Who Can We Target?

Simpli.fi has over 500 data points that we can choose from to target people. They have partnerships with the US Census, credit card companies and more to ensure that we can use multiple forms of data to find the right fit. In the simplest form, we can target age, gender, household income, address, purchase history, homeowner status and more. We then go to Simpli.fi, where the system will show how many people we can target that fits your goals.

Step 3: Pick Your Design

We create 6 or 7 different variations of your ad, so the ads will fit the desired ad spot and look the best they possibly can on varying websites and apps. The client will have the option to run static images, .gif, HTML5 or video advertisements. To run a regular image advertisement or make it animated costs the same! Spotlight will work with clients every step of the way and help create multiple types of creative. Spotlight also helps switch up your creative periodically.

Step 4: Serve Ads To Your Target Person

Spotlight has key triggers to ensure the best performance for each individual. These triggers can be tracked by physical walk-ins, online button clicks or by reaching a certain website URL. If the user isn’t responding to the advertisement for a while, the system will automatically filter them out and bring in another user who is qualified and targeted based on the selected parameters.

Example Target Audiences

  • Married couples with a household income greater than $150,000 and a presence of kids.
  • Married couples with a home value greater than $350,000 and a presence of kids.
A report example of how a mortgage company can target specific locations. Confused? Work with Spotlight and we’ll walk you through step by step!

Examples of Simpli.fi In The Workplace

Companies can serve video streaming ads based on age, income and other factors. They can even serve commercials based on retargeting certain keywords! For example, law firms can target jails, courthouses, ERs, chiropractors, clinics and more. They can then retarget keywords, competitor names and their own website.

For those in the animal industry, Simpli.fi can also target people who enter a geofence around vet offices, PetCo and PetSmart. We would then retarget people searching these keywords and ordering pet supplies online.

Ways To Target Your Audience

There are many ways that we can help you target your audience. Some of them include targeting them based on a location they visited, demographics, interests and buying behaviors. An audience can be targeted while they’re streaming or reading content, once they’ve visited your website, during and after a search relating to you, or even during and after an event that they’ve attended!

Spotlight offers transparency within the results of your targeted advertising campaign. If you’re confused about any step of analyzing the results, we can guide you through the process!

Frequently Asked Questions

Question #1: What is the cost of this targeting?

The cost is based on a CPM (cost per thousand impressions) basis. The number of impressions we recommend will depend on your budget, how specific your targeting is and how big you want your piece of the pie to be.

Question #2: How is the targeting different than Facebook and other major digital advertising platforms?

Programmatic targeting allows advertisers to get around all of the usual headaches of Facebook and be more specific with their targeting. There are no hurdles to jump through for banks, housing and recruiting.

Question #3: Are three age restrictions for this targeting?

Clients are not allowed to geofence any events or buildings that are suspected to be used for kids under 13 years of age. However, you can geofence high schools and target household adults that have young children present.

Question #4: What are the benefits of this targeting?

One of the largest benefits of this targeting is having a digital presence in front of your target demographic without wasting impressions on the wrong person.

Getting Started

All planning, targeting and reporting tasks are performed, saved and tracked in Basecamp; our project management software. Working with clients in Basecamp allows for easier communication and peace of mind for clients when they are able to see what Spotlight is working on.

All clients receive monthly reports for all campaigns to go through ad performance, clicks, click-through rate, conversions and strategy optimizations.

As stated earlier in the article, there are heavy overhead costs associated with doing this type of targeting on your own.

Contact Us Today!

Phone: (701) 478-7768

Email: [email protected]

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Grant is a Senior Editor at Spotlight Media. Grant writes for Fargo INC! and Bis-Man INC!