The Difference Between Cold & Warm Audiences - Why Your Online Ads Don't Work!

What is the difference between a cold audience and a warm audience?

A Cold Audience is everyone who is unaware of who you are. They have not received value from you yet, never consumed any content from your website or social media and have never seen an advertisement from your company. You (or your brand) are a stranger to these people.

A Warm Audience is the group of people who are aware of you or your brand. They may be former customers, e-mail subscribers, website visitors or social media followers. Maybe they have just seen an advertisement of your service. There are varying degrees of warm traffic and generally the warmer the traffic the higher quality the lead.

To put it simply, Cold Audiences have no relationship with you or your brand, while Warm Audiences have some form of relationship.

These audiences are very different, so it is important to understand the difference between the two and customise your marketing strategies to the right audience. It could be the difference between generating thousands of sales or wasting thousands of advertising dollars.

So, how do you shift someone from a cold audience to a warm audience?

This can be done in many ways. If you’re on a limited budget, ensure that your social media platforms are fully optimised and look to provide value in the form of content marketing for your potential clients.

In practical terms, this could be publishing free advice on Facebook or Instagram in the form of a video tutorial or explainer video. The better the content or value, the higher likelihood you have of that piece being shared amongst your follower’s friends and attracting new people into your warm audience.

For people to invest in your business, they must trust you. Providing value with no strings attached is one of the best ways of achieving this trust in the online world.

You should research your ideal target audience. What are their problems? Can you solve them? Where are these people congregating online?

If you can begin to implement solutions for the problems of your target audience, you’ll move them one step higher on the sales ladder. Most businesses are apprehensive about giving away too much value for free in the fear that it devalues their product or services. But the problem that you are solving for your cold audience does not have to be huge. Just move them from A to B with something related to your product or service.

So, if you are a physiotherapist that specialises in muscle strains, post a video of an exercise that you would recommend for someone returning from a hamstring injury. A dentist could post a link to a blog article on your website explaining the top five oral hygiene tips.

There are also many paid advertising options you can implement to build your warm audience. An offer, such as a free voucher, or an informative free PDF-file download could be attached to a Facebook Lead Generation ad campaign to quickly build an e-mail list.

So, start posting informative content on your social media platforms or with your e-mail marketing campaigns. Give away valuable information with no strings attached and watch this turn into new customers, brand loyalty and better customer retention.