Who Are Your Hot, Cold, and Warm Audiences?

Marketing campaigns are usually accompanied with strategy because it does take strategy. You don’t just start a marketing campaign without a laid out plan on what the campaign hopes to achieve; and based on that, the people the campaign will target; and based on that, what the campaign will entail. For instance, the way you run a retargeting campaign is different from say, how you run a campaign aimed at creating brand awareness. In the case of the former, you are targetting people who have had a form of interaction with your brand while the latter will target more of those who haven’t heard of the brand but might be interested if they do. That’s basically where the hot, cold, and warm audiences come in. 

The first thing you need to know about the hot, cold, and warm audiences is that they are simply categorised based on their level of interaction with your brand. For this reason, the marketing approach you use for each category has to differ because although the aim of retargeting is to somewhat nudge your audience to take a certain action, the action required should be based on the category they fall into. Having said all these, what are the difference between hot, cold, and warm audiences? What are the marketing strategies that fit each of them?

Cold Audience

This category of people has never seen or interacted with your brand before. These people are either probably searching the internet looking for information or solution to a certain problem. You can call these people potential customers because they might be interested in what you have to offer; they probably have a need that you can help solve but they have never heard of you. So your job is to provide them with the information that you are available to help solve their problem. Your cold audience will also consist of people who have a need but have not realised that need, so you will want to call that need to their attention. 

When advertising to the cold audience, it is usually better to stay away from a blatant sale. These people don’t know about you, so expecting them to immediately buy from a brand they have never heard of or trusted is not realistic. This is not to say that can’t happen but your aim should be introducing the brand to them and establishing a relationship and your expertise. The kind of contents to direct to your cold audience should be data-driven contents like blog posts, videos, podcasts, and other contents that provide detailed information and also engages them.

Warm Audience

The people that form the warm audience, on the other hand, know about your brand and have interacted with you in some form. They may have followed on social media, liked your contents, visited your website, or may have performed an action like subscribe for your mail list or shared their info with you by signing up or registering for something. The reason they performed this is that they have a level of trust in your brand based on how they have interacted with you over time, however, they have not bought anything or patronised you in any way. 

So, your marketing campaign to your warm audience should entail giving them a reason to go a step further. It is easier to convert someone under this category than to convert someone who is a cold audience because in this case, they have a level of trust in your brand. You just need to give them a little nudge with offers, lead magnets, webinars, and events. You should also monitor their interaction with your brand or products to see what could be the problem that is preventing them from proceeding to purchase.

Hot Audience

Now, for the hot audience. They are called hot audience or hot traffic because they are those you accurately call your customers. They know you and what you have to offer because they have bought from you or patronised you. Your hot audience is great for retargeting to tell them about new products, get them to go for a more expensive service or product. 

In conclusion, using the same marketing campaign strategy for your hot, cold, and warm audiences will be a mistake. You need to make sure that your marketing plans are properly targeted to the right audience so as to get the maximum result from your campaigns.