Targeted Marketing: Know Your Target Audience
Posted on | November 6, 2009 | No Comments
I was with a group of savvy bankers yesterday discussing the Web and social media, among other things. Another great group of people espressing the same frustrations and questions regarding wrapping their heads around digital marketing and how they can use digital channels to effectively reach consumers.
We got to the social media part of the discussion and I heard the typical comments, like “…none of my friends are on Twitter.” This may be true, but one thing that’s important to consider is that there’s a good chance that our friends don’t fit into any of our target audience segments.
Considerations for Target Audience Research
To ensure that your marketing efforts are relevant and optimized for specific target audiences, there are a several things you need to carefully consider:
Demographics – this is a term often used to group members of your audience together into a ’segment’. Very often, these segments relate to age, gender, and income levels. Careful research here can help you align the demographics of your target market segments with specific marketing channels and help maximize ad spend.
Psychographics – consumer attitudes and tendencies may not always align with demographic data. For example, my neighbor’s 11 year-old son is a Harley Davidson enthusiast and has some great Harley accessories, but he’s not buying a Harley anytime soon. Harley enthusiasts could be 16 or 60. The more you know about the lifestyles of your target audience, the more you can tailor your marketing message.
Content Consumption Preferences – our loyalty is to the content, not the delivery mechanism. Important factors to consider here include: What are their favorite sources of info? What influences them? What’s the best single source of info they can tap? This will help you when considering strategic partners, tools, and channels. How about the target audience’s attitude toward the competitor’s content (they’re only a click away)?
Content Creation Preferences – what kind of content is your target audience creating…right now? What photo sites do they use to upload their pix? What kind of blogs do they create? Are they already engaged in blogs about your product category, your brand, or those of your competitors? Monitoring conversations out there about your brand (and your competitor’s brand, too) is an important part of your strategy. Here’s a list of tools to get you started.
Channels – based on your research above, you then choose the right channels to reach your audience. It’s critical to do the research first, then choose the channel(s). If you put the cart before the horse here, you risk spending money on a channel that may not resonate with or be used by your target audience.
Measurement – while not something needed for developing your target audience metrics, I wanted to include measurement here because it’s so important. When considering the measurement of marketing effectiveness, there are numerous factors involved, and it’s difficult to pinpoint what metrics a company should be using to define and track ROI. However, starting with a strong set of quantifiable goals makes it easier to develop KPIs for measuring results. For example, saying you want more visitors to your website isn’t the same as setting a goal to increase unique visitors by 30% over a 3 month period.
What are you doing to figure out who your target audience is and the best way to reach them? I’d love to hear from you.
Ad Networks, Ad Exchanges and The Educated Consumer
Posted on | October 16, 2009 | No Comments
Great article by Tim Cadogan over on AdAge’s DigitalNext regarding ad exchanges, ad networks, and interoperability. I think Tim addresses some of the important questions everyone should be asking, for sure. But one of the larger issues here revolves around education. Those who manage the selection, implementation, and optimization of these digital tools within their organizations need to get a really good understanding of what the business and technical implications are related to their adoption and use before choosing a partner(s).
Based on conversations in the field with my colleagues in technical, sales, and operational roles, it’s clear to me that many are still trying to ‘figure it all out.’ Sure, there are aggressive revenue goals to meet and unmanaged inventory that can be released to ad networks and exchanges to help meet those goals, but like any technology implementation, there needs to be some due diligence undertaken before pulling the trigger.
Perhaps using tools like DoubleGoo’s Ad Exchange 2.0 will help to reduce some of the complexities inherent in the use and optimization of ad networks and maybe, as some have said, the exchanges will help to level the playing field, eliminate bottom feeders, and create opportunities for networks to merge or otherwise consolidate.
However, in order to fully reap the benefits of the interoperability Tim talks about, everyone in the value chain (buy- and sell-side) needs to make sure they’re talking to the right people and vendors to get the information they need to make informed decisions and develop a method to measure results. And here’s a bit of unsolicited advice: you want to have a measurement metric in place before you do a deal with any network or exchange.
Like Sy Syms always says, “An educated consumer is our best customer.” The more information you can gather up front, the better your chances of maximizing whatever opportunities they may offer.
What do you think? I welcome your comments.
Spotlight: Sonia Jairath
Posted on | October 13, 2009 | No Comments
Sonia Jairath, Founder/President of Metierlink, is a recruitment and talent specialist who represents leading professionals to progressive companies in marketing, advertising, media and areas within the digital workspace. She primarily focuses her network on the representation, management and development of the most talented professionals in the industry.
As a former Account Management and Marketing professional, Sonia has had the opportunity to work with leading companies and brands including GCI Group/Grey Inc. on Gerber, Fairchild Publications, Wunderman/Y&R Brands on USPS and AT&T, Ogilvy on IBM, McCann Relationship Marketing on Sprint, TEQUILA/TBWA/CHIAT/DAY on Sprint/Nextel, Hill Holliday on Verizon and AIG on Corporate eBusiness.
Last February, Digital Mindshare Editor Julien Sharp had the privilege of sitting on a panel of one of the many Meetups Sonia organizes in Manhattan for people interested in learning more about the digital and creative industries, and it is a pleasure to have connected with her again for this Spotlight.
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Media Democracy and Content Consumption Preferences
Posted on | October 2, 2009 | No Comments
Interesting times. We’ve got a “media democracy” happening today, where the content we consume is no longer defined by a select group of publishers and no single form of media captures all of our attention. Like automotive brands, there are plenty of media choices available for consumers to choose from.
OK, maybe automotive brands are a bad example at this point (ask my neighbor, who recently bought a Saturn) – but our government is surely working on a plan to fix that, right after they revamp the financial industry, health care, the insurance industry, bring the Olympics to Chicago (oh snap – can you say “meet me in Rio?“) and tackle online privacy/advertising/behavioral targeting issues.
The 4th screen is mobile. Don't leave home without it.
But I digress. Clearly, because of the speed and breadth of technology innovation, our content consumption preferences are changing. But what are we doing, as marketers and advertisers (yes, I’m talking to both the buy and sell sides), to take advantage of that shift? As Jonathan Mendez said recently in a blog post, “…understanding the way people consume media is paramount to optimizing it for revenue generation.”
Well said, Jonathan, “Crusader for Relevance” that you are. Today more than ever, it’s imperative that we take the time to figure out where the consumers are, what they’re talking about and in what format we should deliver the content they’re consuming if we want to maximize the opportunity to interact (and transact) with them.
There's a content consumption profile for everyone. What's yours?
The great thing about working in digital is that we don’t have to guess about any of this. We have incredibly rich stores of real-time data we can pull from, turning a wait-and-see historical approach into a just-in-time, highly proactive approach. And because today’s technology is so damn effective and in the case of Google Analytics, free, we can and should be measuring everything because as we’ve all found out (or will at some point), you can’t manage what you don’t measure.
When you couple the ad networks and exchanges, with their automated processes of buying and selling ad inventory, to this ability to precisely measure consumers’ content consumption preferences, you’ve got the power to deliver the right message to the right person at the right time in the right place. Of course, we’ll all need to get a lot better at the math, but we’re talking near real-time execution down to the site level. And if it ain’t working the way we planned, we can change it – in real-time. Jeepers!
Yes, my friends. It’s time to really hunker down and work to understand the changing content consumption preferences of the consumers whose attention (and interaction) we so desperately want. The days of putting an advert on 3 networks to reach 80% of the female population in America are gone. It’s a highly fragmented media free-for-all out there and the consumer, wherever she’s consuming her content, is in charge.
Listen up.
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