In the crowded digital advertising landscape of 2025, one truth remains constant: reaching the right audience is more important than reaching a large audience. Yet most businesses continue to waste their advertising budgets on broad, ineffective targeting that delivers impressions to anyone and everyone—except the decision-makers who actually matter.

The solution? Third-party audience targeting tools that enable precision marketing at scale. In this comprehensive guide, we'll walk you through exactly how modern B2B marketers are leveraging platforms like SayPrimer to transform their advertising ROI by targeting the needles, not the haystacks.

Why Native Platform Targeting Falls Short for B2B Marketers

When you're running advertising campaigns on platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, or Google Ads, you're typically limited to the native targeting options those platforms provide. While these tools have improved over the years, they still present significant limitations for B2B marketers who need granular control over their audience.

The fundamental problem is twofold:

Limited Granularity: Native platform tools don't allow you to drill down into the specific combinations of company, role, seniority, technology usage, and behavioral signals that define your ideal customer profile. You might be able to target "marketing managers" or "companies in healthcare," but you can't easily target "VP-level marketing decision-makers at medical device manufacturing companies using Salesforce who visited your pricing page in the last 30 days."

Platform Silos: When you build an audience in LinkedIn, that audience stays in LinkedIn. If you want to reach the same people on Meta, Google, Reddit, or other platforms, you need to rebuild that audience from scratch—assuming those platforms even offer comparable targeting capabilities (which they often don't).

The Omni-Channel Imperative: Why Your Audience Needs to See You Everywhere

Modern B2B buyers don't make decisions in a single channel. Your potential customers are researching solutions on Google, engaging with content on LinkedIn, scrolling through Facebook in the evening, and listening to podcasts during their commute.

This is where omni-channel marketing becomes essential. Your audience needs to encounter your message across multiple touchpoints to build the familiarity and trust required for B2B purchase decisions. Studies consistently show that buyers need 7-13 touchpoints before making a purchase decision, and those touchpoints need to span multiple channels to be effective.

Third-party audience targeting platforms solve this problem by allowing you to build your audience once and push it to every major advertising platform simultaneously. This means your carefully crafted audience of VP-level decision-makers at target accounts will see your message on LinkedIn, encounter your retargeting ads on Facebook, discover your content through Google searches, and potentially engage with your Reddit ads—all from a single audience build.

Introducing SayPrimer: A Deep Dive into Advanced Audience Targeting

SayPrimer has emerged as one of the leading third-party audience targeting platforms for B2B marketers, and for good reason. The platform combines extensive data sources with intuitive audience-building tools that make precision targeting accessible even for marketing teams without dedicated data scientists.

Let's explore the key targeting capabilities that make SayPrimer powerful:

Company-Level Targeting: Going Beyond Basic "Firmographics"

The most straightforward way to use SayPrimer is to target specific companies. If you're a B2B service provider who knows exactly which accounts you want to reach, you can simply add those companies to your audience.

For example, if you want to market your pricing optimization software to Nike, you can add Nike as a target company. SayPrimer will show you that Nike has approximately 42,000 employees, is headquartered in Oregon, and provide revenue and industry information. But here's where it gets interesting: you don't have to target all 42,000 people.

You can layer additional targeting criteria to reach only the people who matter:

• Seniority levels: C-suite, VPs, executives, managers, or senior staff

• Departments: Marketing, sales, IT, finance, operations, etc.

• Job titles: Specific roles like "Director of Procurement" or "VP of Supply Chain"

This allows you to build highly specific audiences like "VP-level executives in the finance department at Nike and Adobe" or "managers and above in IT departments at Fortune 500 technology companies."

Industry and Vertical Targeting: Casting a Wider (But Still Precise) Net

Not every B2B marketer has a defined list of target accounts. Many are targeting industries or verticals rather than specific companies. SayPrimer handles this through its keyword targeting feature, which analyzes company bios and industry classifications.

For instance, if you start with a broad search for "manufacturing," SayPrimer identifies approximately 35,000 companies with 5.2 million people. That's still too broad for most budgets, so you can refine further:

• Geographic location: Filter to only United States-based companies, reducing the audience to 2.8 million people

• Specific sub-sectors: Narrow from "manufacturing" to "medical device manufacturing," which drops your audience to just 611 companies and 66,000 people

• Layered targeting: Add seniority and department filters to reach only decision-makers

This tiered approach allows you to start broad and systematically narrow your audience until you reach a group that's both relevant and manageable within your advertising budget.

NAICS Code Targeting: Leveraging Government Classification Data

For B2B marketers who know their industries well, NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) codes offer another powerful targeting dimension. These standardized codes classify businesses by industry and are registered with government agencies like the IRS.

If you know that your ideal customers fall under specific NAICS codes—say, code 541990 for "All Other Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services"—you can target companies within that classification directly. This is particularly valuable for businesses that serve regulated industries or work extensively with government contractors, where NAICS codes are commonly used.

Technology-Based Targeting: Finding Companies by Their Tech Stack

One of SayPrimer's most innovative features is technology-based targeting. The platform can identify which technologies and software platforms companies are using, enabling several powerful use cases:

Competitive Targeting: If you're a CRM alternative to Salesforce, you can target companies currently using Salesforce. This allows you to reach buyers who are already familiar with the product category and may be open to alternatives.

Technology Qualification: If your product integrates with or complements specific software, you can target companies using that software. For example, if you provide advanced analytics for Adobe Analytics users, you can target only companies using that specific platform.

Market Sophistication Targeting: Technology usage often signals company sophistication and budget. Companies using enterprise-level tools like Adobe Analytics typically have larger marketing budgets and more sophisticated operations than those using basic Google Analytics.

The platform identifies technology usage through website pixels and data partnerships, providing a level of insight that would be difficult or impossible to obtain through native platform targeting.

Advanced Retargeting: Pixel-Based Audience Building

While basic retargeting is available on most advertising platforms, SayPrimer takes it several steps further with advanced pixel-based tracking. The platform can:

• Track micro-conversions: Identify visitors who started but didn't complete form fills

• Page-specific audiences: Target people who visited specific pages, like pricing or case studies

• Company-level identification: When someone from Adobe visits your site, you can target everyone at Adobe—or specific departments within Adobe

This approach has been called "retargeting on steroids" because it combines behavioral signals with firmographic data to create highly qualified audiences.

CRM and Marketing Automation Integration: Turning Your Data into Audiences

SayPrimer offers direct integrations with HubSpot and Salesforce, allowing you to turn your existing customer and prospect data into targetable audiences. This unlocks several valuable use cases:

Re-engagement campaigns: Target contacts who haven't engaged with your company in six months or haven't made a purchase recently.

Win-back campaigns: Create audiences of abandoned opportunities or lost deals and run specific creative to bring them back into your pipeline.

Customer expansion: Target your highest-value customers with upsell or cross-sell messaging.

Account-based marketing: For companies practicing ABM, you can sync your target account lists directly from your CRM and ensure you're reaching decision-makers at those accounts across all channels.

The matching rates for CRM-based audiences are significantly higher than traditional CSV uploads to advertising platforms, resulting in larger addressable audiences from your existing data.

The Economics of Third-Party Targeting: Better Reach, Lower Costs

One of the most compelling arguments for using third-party targeting tools is the dramatic difference in cost per thousand impressions (CPM) across platforms. While LinkedIn remains the gold standard for B2B targeting, it's also notoriously expensive, with CPMs often exceeding $30-50 for targeted campaigns.

By building your audience in SayPrimer and pushing it to multiple platforms, you can reach the same decision-makers on platforms with much lower CPMs:

• Meta (Facebook/Instagram): CPMs typically range from $5-15 for B2B audiences

• Google Display Network: CPMs generally fall between $3-10

• Reddit: Emerging as a B2B platform with competitive CPMs of $5-20

This means your advertising budget can generate 3-10x more impressions by reaching your target audience on multiple platforms rather than solely on LinkedIn. The cumulative effect of omni-channel presence—seeing your message on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Google—is often more impactful than higher frequency on a single platform.

Addressing the Elephant in the Room: Data Compliance and Privacy

When discussing third-party data and targeting tools, questions about privacy and compliance are inevitable and important. SayPrimer and reputable audience targeting platforms operate under strict compliance frameworks:

Opt-in data only: All personal information in the platform comes from users who have opted in to data sharing through various mechanisms.

PII protection: The platform handles personally identifiable information in compliance with GDPR, CCPA, and other privacy regulations.

Platform compliance: Audiences are delivered to advertising platforms in formats that comply with each platform's data policies.

This compliance infrastructure is one of the key reasons to use established third-party platforms rather than attempting to build proprietary targeting capabilities or working with less reputable data providers.

Real-World Validation: Does Precision Targeting Actually Work?

Sophisticated targeting tools are only valuable if they actually deliver the promised precision. To validate SayPrimer's accuracy, rigorous testing was conducted over six to eight months, running audiences through LinkedIn (which provides detailed reporting on the companies and roles seeing your ads) even when those audiences could have been targeted through LinkedIn's native tools.

The results were compelling: the companies and job titles seeing impressions and clicking on ads consistently matched the intended targeting parameters. There were no significant outliers or mismatches that would indicate poor data quality or inaccurate targeting.

This validation provides confidence that the investment in third-party targeting tools translates into genuine precision in reaching your intended audience.

Getting Started with Advanced Audience Targeting

The power of platforms like SayPrimer lies in their combination of sophisticated capabilities and relatively accessible implementation. Here's a framework for getting started:

Step 1: Define Your Ideal Customer Profile: Document the specific characteristics of companies and individuals you want to reach, including industry, size, technology usage, and roles.

Step 2: Start Specific, Then Expand: Begin with narrow, high-value audiences to validate your messaging and offers. Once you've proven success with your needles, you can gradually expand to adjacent audiences.

Step 3: Layer Your Targeting: Use multiple criteria together—company, role, seniority, technology, and behavior—to create audiences that are both precise and large enough to be viable.

Step 4: Implement Omni-Channel Distribution: Push your audiences to multiple platforms to maximize touchpoints and improve cost efficiency.

Step 5: Measure and Iterate: Track performance across platforms and audience segments, then refine your targeting based on actual results.

The Future of B2B Audience Targeting

As we move further into 2025 and beyond, several trends are shaping the evolution of B2B audience targeting:

AI-powered audience discovery: Machine learning algorithms are increasingly able to identify patterns in converting audiences and suggest similar prospects.

Intent signal integration: Combining traditional firmographic data with real-time intent signals from content consumption, search behavior, and competitive research.

Privacy-first targeting: As third-party cookies disappear and privacy regulations expand, targeting tools are evolving to deliver precision while respecting user privacy.

Cross-platform identity resolution: Better technology for recognizing the same individual across devices and platforms, enabling true omni-channel experiences.

Businesses that master precision targeting now will be well-positioned to adapt as these capabilities continue to evolve.

Stop Wasting Your Budget on Haystacks

The difference between good B2B marketing and great B2B marketing often comes down to audience targeting. You can have the most compelling creative, the most sophisticated analytics, and the most generous budget—but if you're showing your message to the wrong people, none of it matters.

Third-party audience targeting tools like SayPrimer represent a fundamental shift from spray-and-pray advertising to precision marketing. By combining rich data sources, sophisticated targeting capabilities, and omni-channel distribution, these platforms enable B2B marketers to find their needles in the haystack—and reach them where they are, with messages that resonate.

The question isn't whether your business should be using advanced audience targeting. The question is how much longer you can afford not to.

Want to see SayPrimer in action and learn how precision audience targeting can transform your B2B marketing? Watch the complete Click and Mortar podcast episode where Mike and Dustin walk through detailed platform demonstrations and share real-world examples.

Ready to explore audience targeting for your business? Book a discovery call with the Click and Mortar team. We'll conduct complimentary audience sampling and discuss how advanced targeting can improve your advertising ROI. Visit the Click and Mortar website to schedule your call today.

Watch the FULL EPISODE on YouTube

Listen to the Full Episode on Spotify

Schedule a free discovery call to discuss your specific digital advertising goals:
https://link.eic.agency/widget/bookings/eic_initial_discovery_start

This article is based on insights from the Click and Mortar podcast hosted by Mike Patterson and Dustin Trout, digital marketing experts focused on helping businesses maximize their advertising ROI.