THINKing

Be Relevant

It comes as no surprise to me that Americans are trying harder than ever to avoid advertising. According to a new study by Synovate,

More than four in 10 US consumers said they were skipping ads on TV and the radio as well as avoiding Websites with intrusive ads more in 2009 than they were the year before.

Why, you ask? Because advertising is increasingly less relevant. We’ve discussed this before: advertising needs to be relevant, original and impactful or consumers will avoid it like the plague. And they certainly won’t share the ad with their friends.

When asked about positive ad-related activities, such as searching for advertisements online, sharing and discussing ads with friends, or following brands on Facebook and Twitter, responses were in the single digits. Most consumers reported never doing any such activities.

Relevant ads get shared. But most ads aren’t relevant because the advertiser hasn’t done the hard part: determining who his target audience is from a demographic and psychographic perspective. The more you know about the customer, the easier it is for your creatives to develop relevant, original and impactful messages, and to determine the best ways and vehicles through which to disseminate your messages.

But I’m not letting the agencies off the hook here either. Too often, the agency goes for the easy, humorous approach because they know that using humor increases likeability of the brand. Here’s the problem with that: they inject the humor but leave the brand message out of the equation. How many times have you laughed at a beer commercial only to say after it was over, “whose ad was that?”

Remember, understand your customer and ensure your agency is developing relevant, original and impactful ads for you, or save your money for something besides advertising.

Calling All Carbon-Based Lifeforms

Many businesses want to market to all carbon-based life forms. They won’t take the time to really understand their audiences from geographic, demographic and psychographic perspectives.

Marketers waste a lot of time and money when they consider everyone a prospect. It requires research and a lot of thought, but for my money one of the most important elements to marketing success is clearly defining your audiences.

Geography allows you to target locations more finitely by country, state, city, neighborhood, and telephone number. You can target digital locations by knowing Internet service provider and email service information.

Demographics helps you define audiences by such elements as age, gender, marital status, race, employment status, industry, income, education, household size, market size, job function, intent to purchase, lifestyle-related habits and geographic location.

Once you have your geographic and demographic information, you can put your marketing on steroids by adding psychographic information such as personality and emotionally based behavior linked to purchase choices. Psychographic qualities you might consider include buying history, similar or related product and service interest, and activities, or hobbies.

Demographics help you identify people who might need your product or service, while psychographics help you identify those who need and desire it.

Having finely targeted your audiences in this fashion makes it easier for you to “clone” your best customers, and make the most of your limited marketing resources.

What’s The Top Social Network?

Anita Campbell at Small Business Trends posed the question to 17 web entrepreneurs who she considers to be savvy,

“If your goal is to grow a small business online, and you had time for only one social networking / social media site, which would you choose and why?”

Two gave the correct answer. Oh, does that sound a little arrogant of me? Here’s what Jonathan Fields and Tamar Weinberg said. Let’s see if you agree with arrogant me:

Jonathan Fields, Awake at the Wheel – “It depends on the nature of your business and the reason you are joining. Each hub has it’s own culture and preferred content type, so I would familiarize myself with the major ones, learn what drives each (content sharing, casual friending, business networking), then devote your energies to the hub that aligns best with the nature of your business and your reason for wanting access.”

Tamar Weinberg, Techipedia — “This is a really tough question to answer. Some social media sites cater to certain audiences whereas others cater to an entirely different demographic. Some sites have strict rules for allowable content and others give the submitter free reign and then let the members decide on whether the content will be promoted to a larger audience. The answer really depends on your own small business’s goals: are you aiming for brand awareness? Conversions? Dialogue? All of these factors and clearly-defined goals need to be considered before you can settle on a single social network, as some are better performers than others.”

Here’s why they are correct. Just as with any other marketing tactic, strategy must drive it. What’s your business about? What networks do your customers and prospects utilize? What are your business objectives? Too many marketers and business owners latch on to a tactic that is cool just because it is cool. Do the heavy lifting up front and the tactics you select will sort themselves out.

Well, am I arrogant or dead-on?

Get Well Defined

Body builders do it, marketers should too. OK, all body builders have to do is lift and take steroids to get well defined, so their job is a little simpler. Let’s take a moment to see how marketers can better define their audiences.

Organizations typically have a primary audience with which they must communicate. In order to know how best to reach this audience and what to say to it, we need to define it in a number of different ways. Demographics and psychographics are the scientific methods we employ to get a clear understanding of our audiences.

Demography, says Webster, is “the statistical study of human population, especially with reference to size and density, distribution, and vital statistics.” Webster has no definition yet for psychographics. I say, “demographics studies which people buy, psychographics studies why people buy.”

Let’s take a look at how we use these tools to our best marketing advantage.

Demographic attributes we use to understand our audience might include age, gender, culture, employment status, industry, income level, marital status, job title, sales cycle, and geographic location.

These attributes help us determine specifically who buys from you. Do the work to uncover your best buyers. Don’t attempt to market to all carbon-based life forms. You don’t have enough money to reach them all through communications. Even if you have a diverse market, find out who buys the most or most often from you and focus on them. Determining this core demographic will improve your marketing efforts drastically.

If you want to put your marketing on steroids, add psychographics, the emotional and behavioral qualities of your target market. These attributes may include the emotion, reasoning, psychology, logic, and thought processes behind buying decisions. Here, you’ll want to delve into your buyer’s interests, hobbies, professional associations, previous purchases, and related products purchased.

The Survey Says…
Your current customers hold the key to both the demographic and psychographic attributes of your key audience. Survey them to find out:

• Why did your clients buy your product?
• Why did they buy from you and not a competitor?
• What made them buy from you at a specific point in time?
• Was it an impulse decision or did they ponder it?
• What do they like the most/least about your product?
• What is the benefit of the product?
• Are they willing to refer others to your product?

Once you have a clear understanding of both the demographics and psychographics of your audience, you can craft better messages and place them in the most effective venues.

Who is your primary audience? Tell us about their demographics and psychographics.