Jennifer Dielen.
Most brands have invested heavily in understanding the people who've already found them. But the real growth opportunity sits just outside that universe with high-intent buyers who are actively in market and have never heard of your brand. Here's why that gap exists, and how to close it.
When I recently joined one of the HoldCo agency's Outlook sessions, something they were talking about really rang through and sparked me to write this article. Optimisation has led to conformity. We have over-optimised all campaigns so much that campaigns only target what has worked in the past. This leads to differentiation being in decline. The agency’s answer to their clients is that they are open and embracing of all things outside the box, which other agencies might shy away from. One idea how marketers can also challenge this is by broadening their reach past their known customer. How, I have outlined in my article:
You build your CRM. You install your pixel. You create retargeting audiences from site visitors. You upload customer lists and build look-alikes. You layer in interest signals from your owned channels. Your targeting gets tighter, your CPAs improve, your campaigns start looking efficient on paper. The dashboard is green. Everyone is pleased.
And then growth plateaus. And nobody can quite explain why.
Here is an explanation. You have built a very sophisticated system for talking to people who already know you exist. You have, almost entirely by accident, stopped investing in reaching the people who don't know you.
01 The difference between a known audience and an in-market audience
Let's define the two things clearly.
A known audience is anyone who has already had a touchpoint with your brand. Past customers. Website visitors. CRM contacts. Email subscribers. Social followers. App users. These people are valuable, they've raised their hand at some point and said: "I'm aware of you." Your first-party data is essentially a map of this group.
An in-market audience is something different. It's not defined by their relationship with your brand at all. It's defined by their behaviour in the market right now: The searches they're running, the content they're consuming, the comparisons they're making, the intent signals they're generating on publisher and marketplace sites. These people are in an active purchase window for a category. They may be in market for exactly what you sell. And some of them have never heard of you.
The critical insight here is that these two audience types are not interchangeable. They serve different jobs. And a media strategy that only leverages one of them is, by definition, incomplete.
02 Why brands default to known audiences
It's worth being fair about why this happens. Defaulting to first-party data isn't laziness or bad marketing. It's actually the rational response to several forces pushing in the same direction. Here’s a few reasons why you may default to known audiences:
- Your own data is the easiest data to trust
- Warm audiences convert better – the metrics prove it
- Privacy changes made third-party data feel risky
- Prospecting is harder to measure and defend
All of these forces are real. But together they create a dangerous feedback loop: you get better and better at talking to people who already know you, while your addressable market - all the people in your category who haven't found you yet - goes largely untouched.
03 The scale of what you're missing
In Australia, hundreds of thousands of people are actively researching significant purchases every week. New cars. Home loans. Insurance products. Travel bookings. Consumer technology. Investment options. These people are on publisher and marketplace sites, Carsales, Webjet, Mozo, TechRadar, Executive Traveller, generating clear, observable intent signals. They're comparing. They're shortlisting. They are, in a very literal sense, in the market.
Now look at your last campaign and find the percentage of conversions that came from people who have never interacted with your brand before. No site visits, no email contacts. What’s that number?
For most brands it is uncomfortably low and that is fine. It just means that your first-party strategy is a retention engine, which is exactly what it should be. But to avoid an ageing and stagnating user base there needs to be an acquisition engine alongside it. That is where those in-market buyers, who have never interacted with your brand become valuable. They are real, they are reachable, and if you're not reaching them, someone else is.
04 Why not all "prospecting" solves this problem
At this point, some people will say: We do run prospecting campaigns. We target broad audiences on social. We do programmatic display to build awareness. We're not only talking to known audiences.
That's true. But there's a significant difference between broad prospecting and in-market audience targeting.
Broad prospecting using demographic or interest-based targeting reaches a large group of people who might be relevant someday. Some of them will be in-market. Many won't be. You're paying CPMs across an audience where perhaps 5–15% are actually in an active purchase window for your category.
In-market audience targeting using real behavioural signals from trusted publisher sources is fundamentally different. You're not inferring that someone might be interested in booking a holiday because they follow a travel influencer. You're reaching someone who has been on a flight comparison site four times this week, searched accommodation options in Bali and is actively comparing travel insurance providers. They are not doing this out of pure enjoyment in their pastime. The intent signal is direct, recent, and specific.
The distinction matters for budget efficiency. If 80% of your prospecting audience isn't actually in-market, you're paying to reach a lot of people who were never going to convert in the near term. In-market audience data doesn't eliminate waste entirely, but it concentrates your spend dramatically in the part of the market that's ready to buy.
"Broad awareness reach and in-market audience targeting are not the same thing. One tells people you exist. The other finds people who are already looking."
05 What the right audience strategy looks like
The answer here is not to abandon your first-party data strategy. Your CRM is valuable. Your pixel is valuable. Your retargeting audiences are valuable. The point is not to replace them, but to recognise their limitations.
- First-party data for retention and warm conversion.
- In-market data for new buyer acquisition
- Measure new buyer rate as a primary KPI – this is critical to show whether you’re growing or harvesting
- Insist on data provenance from your audience partners to know what you’re buying
Not all in-market audience data is created equal. Ask specifically where the signal comes from. Publisher-direct, consent-based, first-party data from trusted platforms is categorically different from modelled or inferred audience segments. Know what you're buying.
Your next best customers, the ones who are in-market right now, actively deciding, genuinely ready to buy, they're out there in numbers. They don't know you yet. And the window to reach them before they decide is short.
Jennifer Dielen is Head of Partnerships at Audience360