What is Dark Marketing?

Dark Marketing

Dark marketing is a trend that focuses on ultra-targeted and hyper-customized marketing to specifically reach a brand’s niche target audience and no one else. Apple is actually using Twitter to communicate with its target audience. But it does so through dark posts, sponsored posts that can only be seen by a limited number of users.

Dark marketing is as selective as possible. It is not interested in reaching as many people as possible, but only those that the brand has identified as its ideal customer.

This type of marketing is only possible thanks to the large amount of information available about Internet users, information they often share themselves. This makes it possible to create hyper-specific target audiences and reach them with very specific messages related to the wants and needs of those who receive them.

What Are the Benefits of Dark Marketing

• Efficiency. Mass marketing campaigns come with a high cost, while dark posts target very small groups of users and therefore have a much lower cost.
• Effectiveness. By being highly segmented, dark marketing campaigns are much more likely to generate the action they seek to achieve such as a click, a lead or a conversion. This makes the ROAS of the campaigns higher. In addition, they avoid generating attrition, since users who are not interested in a publication simply do not see it.
• Customization. The brand no longer needs to try to satisfy everyone, so it can be much more specific in its message. This in turn translates into greater effectiveness.
• Experimentation. Dark posts are an ideal place to do controlled testing with a limited audience, for example, through A/B testing. This way, a brand can test different options to find out what works. And what doesn’t with each niche audience, all without disturbing its follower base. Since each group receives a different creative instead of being bombarded with several.

How to Effectively Use it?

1. Be speedy.

The No. 1 secret weapon in a dark marketer’s arsenal is speed. In this convenient, immediate digital age, you can’t afford to take months planning out marketing campaigns. If you think of an idea in the morning, you need to be able to execute on it in the afternoon. That’s the reality we’re living in. Your marketing team needs to be made up of segmentation, personalization, and retargeting whizzes who can dream up and execute in no time flat. They also need to be well-versed in today’s fragmented marketing channels.

2. Respect privacy.

The elephant in the room here is the idea of privacy. Data breaches and the rollout of the European Union’s GDPR are hot issues these days. And everyone is concerned about how their information is being mined and shared. As your business explores dark marketing, you need be careful to gather the needed information in a way that ensures privacy. For example, consider not collecting personally identifiable information and simply sticking to general interests and digital search traffic.

3. Keep your tech on the cutting edge.

In addition to being quick on the trigger and respectful of your prospects’ privacy, you need to keep up with marketing technology. This seems like an obvious point, but it’s so important that it’s worth stressing anyway. If you’re using outdated tools, you’re behind the curve. We’re talking about digital marketing here, so advanced technology is key.

4. Track your success.

Some other considerations to keep in mind when exploring dark marketing are using dark social tools and shortened URLs for advanced engagement tracking, and keeping an eye out for engagement spikes from certain channels.