Identify Your Target Audience and Focus
on the Consumer
Team 2 Discussion:
#MaristSM16
Defining your target
audience and devoting attention to buyers and away from products are important
points made in the readings this week. Jannelle and I are serving as co-leaders
this week so be sure to check both of our blogs.
Defining
Your Target Audience with Social Media
Kerpen (2015) devotes most of
chapter two to defining a target audience by utilizing social media. Have you
ever logged into your Facebook account and wondered how some of the
advertisements are eerily catered to your interests? This is an example of hypertargeting, “where a
company gears marketing and advertising efforts towards a specific group through
individual social media accounts” (Kerpen, 2015, p 25). “On Facebook alone, you
can advertise to target markets based on age, gender, education, marital
status, interests and employer” (Kerpen, 2015, p. 25). Essentially, you can
target people based on the content they provide in their profiles, posts, likes
and comments.
Using specifics to hone in on your
target audience allows you to connect directly with your consumer (Kerpen,
2015, p. 25). For example, Facebook identifies millions of people who fit basic
search criteria such as age, gender and location (Kerpen, 2015, p. 28). For
more detailed searches, Kerpen suggests using these additional categories:
Interests
Any interest people list on their
profile. Be specific and use keywords to narrow your search even further.
More Demographics
Allows you to search for job titles
to market to decision makers for businesses.
Work
Inputting a work place searches for
people who identify them as an
employer.
LinkedIn is great for searching for people based on job title, school, affiliations, industry and company size. Using a basic Twitter search identifies your target audience based on what they are saying, not demographics. Social media helps you find your target audience and provides you with free information (Kerpen, 2015, p. 34).
Once
you identify your target audience, listen and begin the conversation. Consumers
have a better tendency to engage when a message addresses an important and real
issue. The more empowering, the more effective it will be. Proctor & Gamble
has mastered the art of creating ads that strike an emotional chord with its
target audience. In the Thank
You Mom commercial during
the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games, P&G integrated social media platforms into
the campaign using #ThankYouMom on Facebook & Twitter to spark conversations with P&G
consumers.
Team 2:
Do you think P&G successfully identified
and engaged its target audience
with #ThankYouMom?
The
Buyer Persona Profile
Scott (2015) devotes
most of chapter 10 to the buyer persona profile. Kerpen (2015) titled his
chapter three, “Think – and Act – Like Your Consumer.” Typically, most websites
are one-size-fits-all. Many companies’ social media campaigns are similar.
Website content is organized by the company’s products, not by categories
matching buyer personas.
For example, the popular
New England supermarket Big Y
organizes its content by departments and locations.
What if it categorized
content based on buyer persona – such as age, behavior, and dietary needs? Each
product the store offers reaches certain buyer personas. While it may be
difficult to achieve in the store, creating categories matching buyer persona
would be effective on the web.
For example, a friend has a gluten allergy and must choose foods that are gluten free. Imagine
if supermarket websites had a section on their website listing their foods that
are gluten free. There’s no question that supermarket would be her favorite
store. And ours, too.
Social media works the
same way. Our friend doesn’t search for “great supermarkets” on Google, nor
does she post about them on social media. She does, however, search for “gluten
free foods” and posts about them on her social media channels.
Scott (2015) points out
that many marketers and PR professionals focus on the wrong (and often
irrelevant) measures of success, such as numbers of press releases and website
hits. He associates this lack of clear goals with seven-year-olds playing soccer.
The whole pack chases after the ball. “We fill our lists with balls and lose
sight of the goal,” Scott noted (p. 163). And, he added, what’s even worse is
that PR management teams actually encourage us to go after the balls.
Successful online
marketing efforts will work if the buyer persona is a part of the strategic
planning process. Scott created a planning
template that may be helpful in getting started with creating
strategic buyer personas. He created the template to help people implement
strategies for reaching buyers directly (Scott, 2015, p. 182).
Another critical point
that both authors of this week’s readings make is to quickly respond to
comments on social media. Responding in real time keeps the customer up to date
and shows the world that you are engaged. Not responding quickly is a
missed opportunity. Unfortunately, company leaders often urge PR professionals
to not respond to posts, especially negative ones. There are many
examples of what happens when companies don’t listen correctly and respond to
their customers’ social conversations.
If we have established
buyer personas, we understand our customers and therefore, are better equipped
to respond to them immediately. We now understand how to speak their language
and what their real words are and the phrases they use.
As the
experts and the ones responsible for PR and marketing, it is critical that we
stay on top of the latest changes and best practices and that we update and
educate our company's leaders on these new opportunities.
Team 2:
Expanding on
Scott's example of leaders still using old rules of PR, write about one rule by
leaders in your workplace that you believe is ill-advised in this new world of
social media marketing. How would you go about explaining to leaders why a
new approach is critical?
References:
Borison,
R. (2014, December 10). The Top 10 Social Media Fails of 2014. Retrieved
February
08,
2016, from http://www.inc.com/rebecca-borison/top-10-social-media-fails-2014.html
Kerpen,
D. (2015). Likeable social media. (2nd ed.). United States: McGraw
Hill Education.
Scott,
D. M. (2015). The new rules of marketing and PR. (5th ed.). Hoboken, New
Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Nicely laid out - helpful information on gathering your buyers persona.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Shannon! I believe this is the most important information that I've read from Scott so far. I've downloaded his marketing strategy planning template and have started using it with my communications team at Springfield College. My social media coordinators are especially getting some great use out of it. We're having fun with it, too.
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