Guides to Social Media Audiences and Marketing
This guides section provides educational resources on social media audiences, targeting strategies, and data-driven marketing concepts. The content is designed for marketers, founders, and teams looking to better understand how audience segmentation works across platforms, how data is used responsibly, and how targeting decisions are made in modern digital advertising. Learn more About the SMA Guides Library.
Featured Guides
- Custom Audiences vs Lookalike Audiences (Simple Explanation)
- Custom Audiences vs Lookalike Audiences: Examples, Costs, and Use Cases
Audience targeting is a foundational component of social media marketing. Understanding the difference between custom audiences and lookalike audiences helps advertisers choose the right strategy for retargeting, prospecting, and campaign scaling.
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What Is Audience Segmentation in Digital Marketing?
Introduction Audience segmentation is often treated as a tactical exercise — dividing people into neat categories based on age, location, or intere... -
First-Party vs Platform Data: What Marketers Should Know
Introduction Few concepts in digital marketing generate more confusion than the distinction between first-party data and platform data. These terms... -
How Social Media Platforms Build and Match Audiences
Introduction Modern social media platforms are often described as advertising tools, but that framing misses a more important reality: they are aud... -
The Shift From Third-Party Data to First-Party Audiences
For many years, digital advertising relied heavily on third-party data to understand user behavior and target audiences at scale. That model is now... -
What Are Social Media Custom Audiences and How Do They Work?
Social media platforms allow advertisers to reach users based on interests, behaviors, and demographics, but one of the most widely used targeting ...