You’re probably no stranger to the ever-growing demand for personalization. From Netflix to Amazon, we’re all surrounded by personalized ads every single day—and your customers expect the same kind of experiences from your company. The best way to upgrade your advertising strategy with personalization? Weather-based ads.
Weather-based ads for home service contractors use the current weather and forecasts of a given location to deliver hyper-personalized ad experiences to your audience. By tapping into location data, weather-triggered ads can create contextual messaging for local homeowners. Like any other effective marketing strategy, your main goal is to strike an emotional chord with your audience and drive them one step closer to hiring your contractor business.
Want to make weather-based ads work for your business? Here’s everything you need to know to kick your digital marketing strategy into high gear with programmatic media.
Maybe you’re already using programmatic ads to deliver relevant messages to the right people at the right time—and that’s a great start. But when you’re ready to take your ad strategy to the next level, weather-based ads are the tool you need to gain an edge over the competition.
After all, targeting homeowners with contextually relevant ads based on the weather forecast is a natural match for programmatic media, especially native advertising. You want to hone in on your target audience with the right messaging, at the right time, to maximize your chances of converting prospects into leads. Here’s how weather-triggered ads can transform your ad strategy into a well-oiled, lead-generating machine.
Still on the fence about weather-triggered ads? Let’s take a look at one of our clients. Company 119 partnered with The Gutter Boys and Pristine Clean to better optimize, plan, and target ads related to the weather. Our team combined purchasing trends with complex algorithms to determine when and how to serve ads to local homeowners on mobile and connected TV (CTV) devices. By looking carefully at the local weather forecasts in key regions, Company 119 identified the exact days and times to serve ads, anticipating when customers might start searching for local power washers.
Combined with location data, weather triggers make it possible to provide the most contextual messages to your customers so you can tap into their moods, desires, and purchase intent at any given moment. So, what are you waiting for? Here’s how to upgrade your ad strategy with the power of programmatic.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re marketing in your hometown or serving ads to adjacent cities; you should never make assumptions about the weather. Just like any other digital marketing strategy, you need to base your conclusions on real data so you can make the best decisions for your company.
For example, a roofer might assume that as the temperature increases, more homeowners will want to start roof replacement projects—but higher temperatures might also mean that more homeowners are taking vacations. Instead, those potential customers might put off their home improvement projects until they’re back home.
Since there are so many factors that impact advertising decisions, you need to focus your attention on concrete data and machine learning to drive results. When you use data and artificial intelligence to guide your programmatic strategy, you can pinpoint trends. From there, you can build powerful campaigns to target your audience with the right message when they need you most.
Before launching your new weather-based advertising strategy, you’ll want to take a step back and think about your target audience. The same weather forecast might mean different things to different segments of your audience—and you’ll need to tailor your messaging accordingly. For example, 50 degrees in April in Ohio might feel like springtime weather, while 50 degrees in Miami might feel chilly to locals. Remember: Your goal is to create targeted ads, and you don’t want to miss the mark by serving cookie-cutter ads to every segment.
Our advice? Leverage the weather forecast, whether that’s increasing temperatures or snowstorms, to showcase your products and services. Whether it’s AC units, pressure washing services, or landscape maintenance, customize your messaging to different audiences based on their surrounding forecast. Whenever possible, try incorporating the weather into your ad creatives. The more your ads resemble someone’s geographic location, the more they’ll resonate with your prospects.
Ultimately, the insights you derive from your programmatic advertising platform can only be as accurate as your data. And unfortunately, low-quality data is more common than you might think.
So, what’s the best way to collect high-quality data for weather-based targeting? If you’re not sure where to start, first-party data—data that your company has collected about your leads and past customers—is the best choice for contextual targeting. And if you’re using customer relationship management (CRM) software, you probably already have tons of data to kickstart your strategy.
Otherwise, you’ll need to collect data on website users (think: their IP address, zip code, or mobile GPS data) to guide your strategy. From there, you can tie their location information to a given city, integrate your data with a weather API, and incorporate weather data into your ad targeting decisions.
The next step of your weather-based ad strategy? Social media. Setting up weather-based targeting on Facebook, Instagram, and other social media platforms is pretty straightforward, but you might encounter a few hiccups during the process.
For example, when you’re setting up location targeting, Facebook limits your custom locations per ad set. These limitations won’t affect most small contractor businesses, but if you’re running a multi-location marketing strategy, custom targeting can make the process more complex and time-consuming.
Once you launch a weather-based campaign, you’ll also notice that these ads will restart the Facebook learning phase each time they’re activated. You’ll typically want to avoid this since it can interfere with your campaign’s optimization, but our clients haven’t noticed any major consequences on ad performance using automated rules while running weather-triggered ads.
At the end of the day, weather-based targeting is a win-win situation for everyone. Your customers are more likely to see relevant messaging for home services they’re interested in, and your contractor business gets a higher return on your advertising budget.
Ready to integrate weather-based ads into your marketing strategy? Want to stop wasting hard-earned marketing dollars on campaigns that don’t perform? At Company 119, we’ve worked with clients across multiple industries, from auto repair to power washing, to drive results with programmatic. Give us a call today to grow your business with weather-based ads.
