Understanding Your Audience: The Key to Effective Marketing in the Digital Age
For years, marketers have relied on media as a proxy for understanding people. In the early days of digital media, this worked well because it was cheap. For less than $.10 a click, and with few rules, search engines were a wonderful place to learn and experiment. However, as media costs have risen and restrictions have become more prevalent, it’s become harder to use media as a reliable source of audience insight. So how do you discover your audience in the digital age?
The answer lies in understanding the person behind the click. While protecting their privacy, having a theory of who they are and why they clicked can be a powerful mitigating factor. If you understand something about why they buy, you can then restrict who to reach. This requires a shift in mindset from simply buying the dictionary (i.e., searching for as much media as possible) to being more strategic in your approach.
One effective strategy is to quantify audience insights at scale. There are a number of tools available that can help you do this, such as social media listening platforms and customer data platforms – but this only discovers the ‘conscience self’ – it does not discover the person’s purpose, mindset and core psychological reasons why thy buy.
By converting (not analyzing) customer data and social media conversations into mindset markers using Stealth Dog Labs technology, you can gain a better understanding of what drives your audience to make a purchase. This information can then be used to refine your product design, marketing messaging, and targeting.
Another strategy is to take advantage of low media cost options that still exist. While search engine clicks may be more expensive today, there are other options such as social media and influencer marketing that can be more cost-effective. By working with influencers who have a strong following in your target market, you can reach a large audience without spending a lot of money on media.
Without discovering the why, you are ingesting too much noise in the system and making ‘averaging’ too common and problematic.
In conclusion, while media costs have risen and restrictions have become more prevalent, marketers can still discover their audience by understanding the person behind the click. One effective strategy is to quantify audience insights at scale using social media listening platforms and customer data platforms, but this only scratches the surface. By utilizing the technology provided by Stealth Dog Labs, you can gain a deeper understanding of your audience’s purpose, mindset, and core psychological drivers that impact their purchasing behavior. This information can then be used to refine your product design, marketing messaging, and targeting, resulting in a more effective marketing strategy. By combining these strategies, marketers can gain a competitive edge and effectively reach their target audience in the digital age.