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Prospecting

Targeting new potential customers who haven't interacted with your brand.

Definition

Prospecting is advertising to new audiences to acquire customers who don't know your brand yet.

Prospecting Strategies

Metrics

Prospecting typically has higher CPA but is essential for growth.

Why It Matters

Prospecting campaigns target people who haven't interacted with your brand yet — cold traffic. It's how you grow your customer base and fill the top of your conversion funnel. Without prospecting, you'll exhaust your warm audiences and hit a scaling ceiling. Effective prospecting is the key to sustainable growth.

Examples

  • A broad targeting campaign on Meta letting the algorithm find new potential customers
  • A lookalike audience campaign based on your top purchasers to find similar prospects
  • A Google Search campaign targeting non-branded keywords to reach new searchers

Common Mistakes

  • Expecting prospecting campaigns to match retargeting ROAS — they have different benchmarks
  • Not excluding existing customers and warm audiences from prospecting campaigns
  • Giving up on prospecting too quickly instead of optimizing creative and messaging for cold audiences