When it comes to digital marketing, the more people that see your content, the better. It sounds simple, but there’s a lot more to it than meets the eye. That’s why marketing reach has become a point of emphasis in modern marketing campaigns.
Discover more about marketing reach and how you can use it to maximize your campaigns.
What is reach?
Reach is the metric that refers to the unique number of viewers a page, ad, or piece of content receives. It tracks the number of individuals who have seen something rather than the total number of views a piece of content has received (known as impressions).
You’ll often hear reach, impressions, and engagement talked about together, but they track slightly different metrics. They can be most simply defined as:
- Reach: Unique viewers (number of individuals that saw the content)
- Impression: Total views (including multiple views by the same people)
- Engagement: Number of actions taken such as clicks, likes, shares, and comments
While many metrics play an important role in digital marketing campaigns, it’s all for nothing if the content isn’t seen by anyone. That’s why reach comes in at the top of the checklist. Here we’ll cover what you need to know and how you can expand and maximize your marketing reach.
Why marketing reach matters
Reach is a useful metric for several important reasons. The most obvious is that building brand awareness and visibility relies on getting people to see your content. The more people that see something, the better.
But that expands past just getting new eyes. Growing your reach isn’t just about new viewers, it’s also about keeping viewers. That means reach is a key indicator in both customer acquisition and retention. To truly maximize reach, you’ll want to create content that speaks to both new and existing users.
Types of marketing reach
Knowing your general reach numbers is beneficial, but some platforms provide additional insights into different types of marketing reach. These include:
- Organic reach: Measures the number of unique viewers a piece of content received naturally (without paid assistance).
- Paid reach: Measures the number of unique viewers a piece of content received as a result of paid sponsorships/ads.
- Viral reach: Measures the number of unique viewers a piece of content received as a result of interactions such as shares, reposts, likes, and comments. This can be further broken down into direct and indirect reach, where you see how many viewers were exposed to content due to being direct followers versus seeing it as a result of shares or mentions.
Strategies to expand marketing reach
When implementing strategies for expanding marketing reach, there are a few tried-and-true approaches that businesses will want to include.
Social media marketing
It’s no secret that social media is a hotspot for marketing. Businesses will want to ensure they aren’t limiting their presence to a single platform, and are creating content for as many social media platforms as possible. Not every person is on every platform, meaning you’ll reach more people simply by putting your content on as many apps/sites as possible. That also means creating diverse (but consistent) content that better targets the varying types of users each social media platform is predominantly used by.
Search engine optimization (SEO)
When people have questions, they go to Google (or whatever their preferred search engine is). By incorporating SEO strategies and best practices into your content, you’re more likely to show up high on search results pages, which can increase your brand’s reach.
For example:
- Use intent-driven keywords: Target phrases like "best email marketing software" or "how to create engaging content" to attract users actively searching for solutions.
- Optimize for featured snippets: Answer questions clearly and concisely to appear in Google's answer boxes.
- Improve site performance: Speed, mobile-friendliness, and proper indexing are essential for SEO success.
Content marketing
Different types of content speak to different types of audiences. That means creating a wide net of content to reach as many new audiences as possible.
Here’s how to optimize:
- Test different channels with different content: Experiment with platforms like YouTube, LinkedIn, or TikTok, testing video tutorials, blog posts, and infographics to identify where each type performs best.
- Create varied formats: Appeal to broader audiences by offering blogs, videos, infographics, case studies, and eBooks.
- Monitor engagement: Use analytics to determine which formats and channels drive the most traffic and conversions.
Email marketing
Email lists and campaigns are a very strong way to grow an attentive audience. They create a group of people who care about what you are presenting and importantly generate a lot of clicks. Outside of pitching email signups on social media, one of the best ways to expand reach via an email marketing strategy is through the use of targeted lead magnets that offer specific content to people based on the type of content they were already looking at. By doing this you not only reach more people, but you retain them as well. And it goes without saying, be sure to make your content interesting both in substance and design.
Influencer partnerships
With social media's takeover comes the rise of the social media influencer. People look to influencers they like and trust for guidance on products, making influencers a great way to increase reach. Influencers tend to have a set demographic of followers, meaning you can pinpoint the type of influencers most likely to have an audience that you’d like to target. By working with the influencer, your business can gain a new level of exposure, turning an influencer's audience into your own.
Nextdoor Ads Manager
You certainly want to cast your net as wide as possible when it comes to maximizing reach, but that doesn’t mean you should forget about the power of local support. One in three U.S. households are active on Nextdoor, making it a prime location for expanding your reach amongst potential local customers. With Nextdoor Ads Manager, you can run objective awareness campaigns that aim to put your content in front of people who are most likely to remember them. Combined with in-depth marketing analytics, you’ll be able to fine-tune your campaigns as feedback data comes in, allowing you to target both broad and specific audiences.
How to measure marketing reach
Successful digital marketing campaigns hinge on using analytics to craft and hone the most effective content for your business. That means using tools like Google Analytics, social media insights, and SEO keywords.
By tracking your data, you’ll have better insight into key performance indicators (KPIs) such as reach, impressions, views, and unique visitors. When used in conjunction with each other these engagement metrics can help fine-tune your content into successful campaigns.
If your net reach is high but impressions and engagement numbers are low, it means you’re doing a good job at getting content in front of people, but for some reason, it’s not compelling people to take action. In that case, you know that you can maintain an effective reach strategy, but will want to go back to the drawing board on the type of content people are seeing. Conversely, if your reach is low but other metrics are high, it means you’re probably making impactful content, but need to readjust your strategy on visibility.
By measuring reach and crafting your content around these key metrics, you’ll build a marketing campaign that maximizes customer exposure, acquisition, and retention.
Discover more on reach vs. impressions in our guide.
Common challenges & solutions
As with anything, increasing your marketing reach will not be without challenges. Early campaign struggles like finding a target audience are to be expected, but additional hurdles often arise as search engines and social platforms are prone to making algorithm changes with little to no warning. This means that high-performing content can suddenly tank, and a lack of transparency can make it difficult to re-optimize content.
The solution to common challenges is going to be multipronged and ever-shifting. Generally speaking, these are some of the best ways to overcome them:
- Create high-quality content. It seems pretty obvious, but one thing algorithms won’t punish is good content. So long as your content is impactful to your target audience, your likelihood of engagement and thus prioritization by algorithms is sure to come.
- Use paid strategies. While shifting algorithms can affect organic content, paid strategies tend to be quite consistent in their ability to maintain a level of reach and engagement.
- Foster relationships with followers. Even when algorithms get fickle, if you have a loyal base, you should be able to ride out dips while you readjust. One of the best ways to do that is by fostering a sense of relationship with users through generating meaningful content and opening channels of communication such as engaging with comments or reposting user content that shares your product or message.
- Use tools and analytics. This is a recurring theme, but business tools and analytics are key to modern marketing success. Using built-in platform insights or tools like Nextdoor Conversion API and Nexdoor Pixel allows you to gain a clearer picture of the effectiveness of your advertising campaign and the actions people take when interacting with your content or website.
Maximize your reach
Maximizing your marketing reach requires consistent monitoring and tweaking. While no one strategy is the answer for every business, implementing tried-and-true strategies like social media marketing, SEO, content marketing, email marketing, influencer partnerships, and Nextdoor Ads Manager is sure to get you on the right path to growing your reach and increasing your customer base.
When it comes to boosting your local reach, Nextdoor Business can help you find success in your neighborhood. In fact, 79% of Nextdoor users were influenced by a recommendation they saw on Nextdoor, making it the perfect platform for finding motivated audiences wherever your services are provided.
Take the next step and claim your Nextdoor business page to get started.
