Audience Research Overview

Digital Marketing - Study Notes:

The importance of audience research

The voice of the customer

We’ve moved away from the industrial era or pre-Internet world when the brand was the center of the universe. There was still word of mouth, but it didn’t have the amplification of the web behind it. So brands could really establish a lot of credibility through advertising and other direct to customer tactics.

However, then the Internet came along and all of that changed. Although most brands still hold dearly to marketing techniques like advertising, PR, and direct marketing, they are no longer making the same impact.

The web and especially the social web have given customers the tools to spread word of mouth further and faster than ever. In the social era or post-Internet world, one customer voice could have as much of or even more of an impact than your advertising campaigns.

Understanding your audience

It’s important to understand your audience for two key reasons:

• Audience-centric world: Whereas the brand used to be positioned at the center of the conversation, the audience is now at the center of the conversation. The brand now merely part of the conversation. This is what we call an audience-centric world.
• Audience perspective: Researching your audience is incredibly important because we need to understand everything through the lens of the audience, what they love, what they hope for, who they follow, and, of course, what motivates them.

Demographics vs. psychographics

The whole person

Knowing your customer is not about demographics any longer. The social web has given us tools to find out all about the whole human being rather than just their age and gender and ethnicity. This whole person often cuts across demographics.

For example, you aren’t going to be studying millennials here. You’re going to be looking into communities of interest, where you’ll find the affinities and passions that bond people together.

What are demographics?

Demographics used to be thought of as a good way to categorize people. Men, 18 to 34, all like football, for instance. However, it turns out that diversity within that segment is so vast that what you have is imperfect data that doesn’t lead to really good insights.

It’s important to get the idea of demographics – which are statistical data, like gender and sex and education – out of your mind and start instead to think of psychographics.

What are psychographics?

Psychographics is more interest-based. It’s the study of personality, values, opinions, attitudes, interests, and lifestyles.

With the social web allowing people who share interest and passions to gather around those interest and passions, there are more and more places online for them to spend time and pay attention.

Communities of interest

Instead of describing your audience as demographic groups that you’re familiar with such as millennial moms or boomer retirees, think of them in terms of gathering around interests or passions. They are a community of interest or a community of practice and may interact or know one another only within that realm.

Dimensions of audience research

There are multiple dimensions of audience research:

• Attitudes and behaviors
• Needs, wants, and goals,
• Life stage
• Level of understanding
• Other brands they follow
• Interests
• Motivations

Narrow your audience

Another step here to take is to narrow your audience. Now the knee-jerk reaction is, “But my product or service is meant for everyone!” However, you probably don’t have the budget to reach everyone. And anyway, you can’t speak to everyone at once.

Everybody has their own interests and passions. So you can decide to speak to a specific audience whose language you understand, whose motivations you understand, whose passions you’re on board with. Or you can create generic messages that may or may not hit their mark with anyone.

How to narrow your audience

How do you narrow your audience? This is the tricky part and it evolves through your research.

With an established customer base

If you already have an established customer base, you have an advantage. Whether they follow you on social media or you have a database full of customers, you can cross-reference their taste, their desires, their comings and goings, and their motivations with all sorts of social intelligence tools.

However, you still need to narrow this audience. Think about your best customers, such as:

• Those who buy and buy repeatedly
• Those who love your product and use it all of the time
• Those who recommend your product to their network
• Those who are connected to a dense community of interest

Once you’ve narrowed this audience, use this smaller sample of group as the basis to your research.

Without a customer base

If you’re starting out and you don’t really have a customer base, then you’re going to need to find a customer within a community of interest who also needs your product or service. And finding a person isn’t easy. You’re going to need to access a new series of social intelligence tools, social listening, and other research methods.

Density in a community of interest

What is density?

Density is the measurement of how concentrated the relationships are within a community of interest. Traditionally, before the web, density was measured on how close people live together in a population. But now with the web, it’s the number of connections there are between people. How many interests do they share in common? Do they meet offline?

Why is density important?

The best, most qualified leads come from referrals and communities of high density are referral engines. The higher the density relationships within the community, the more messages and ideas will spread between the members of that community online and off. The denser the community, the more connected they are, the more interest they have in common, the more time they spend together online and off, the more they talk and trust one another’s recommendations. You’ll want to tap into this. It will make your job as a social media marketer so much easier.

How do you measure density?

Some signals of density are:

• The number of people and activity within discussion groups: You’ll find people online on tools such as Reddit and Facebook and LinkedIn, having discussions and conversations around their interests.
• The number of connections between people within the group: Within each group, the number of people who are connected to each other also creates density.
• The interactions and shared interests and passions of that group: Within a group, if many people within the group share multiple passions, not just the interest of that group, they’re more likely to spend more time together and more time discussing.
• The presence of offline meetups: This is where you’re getting to the point where you’re going from being in a discussion group or a forum, or just talking on Twitter to meeting up for coffee which always deepens the relationships.

What leads to density?

 Here are some of the factors that lead to density:

• Uncertainty: Think about startup founders and other groups where they have a lot of uncertainty ahead of them. They’re going to gather to share advice more often.
• Isolation and marginalization: For example, a lot of women in tech groups really benefit from gathering and sharing tips and tricks as well as helping boost one another within the community.
• Competition: Sports team fans definitely connect and bond over their rivalry with other sports teams.
• High passion: The adult coloring book phenomena sprung up over the last many years. And we watched as adult coloring book enthusiasts wanted to talk endlessly about their new-found passion.
• Shared experiences: This is where you’ll find mummy bloggers who can share their experience in motherhood and feel connected even though they’re isolated.
• Close contact: This is where the original definition of density comes into play, like small town communities who can’t help but bond with their neighbors.
• Unique identities and taste: Think about the way you dress, the style on the dress like goths and punks, and anyone who identifies strongly with a style that isn’t necessarily mainstream or accepted.
• History: For instance, the Jewish community who have strong historic ties and hardships to share over the years.
• Time to kill: This refers to teenagers and others who may seek out communities to spend free time and meet new people.

As the factors above increase, the density increases. There’s a point where group size also hurts density. For example, when towns become cities, community density dissipates. So small- to mid-size communities are the best to focus on.

How do you narrow your audience?

You can ask a number of questions to help you narrow your audience.

How dense is this community of interest?

Keep in mind that lack of density doesn’t necessarily mean that you should disqualify them. It actually could create an opportunity. Tim O’Reilly, the founder of O’Reilly Media, the company behind some of the most best-selling developer resource books and conferences once said: “If you see a parade, get in front of it.” That is if you see an emerging community that requires leadership and cohesion, and you can add that value. It can be incredibly powerful.

Are the members of this community in need of what you’re offering?

This is a fundamental question to ask yourself. If you see a fantastic, dense community, however, they’re not in need of your product or service, you should probably not make them your core community of interest.

Do you have a connection or experience with this community?

You can definitely grow connections from scratch but if you already share a passion or connections through a community, all the better.

Putting it all together

A good exercise to do now is to put everything you’re thinking about into the following statement:

• My audience is (narrow audience) who needs specific needs (that I can help with). I’m particularly qualified to serve this group because, (social proof).

Here’s a personal example. When I was trying to come up with the same statement for my web series, this is what I came up with:

• Truly Social is a video series created for frustrated social media marketers who are trying to sell concepts to their bosses and/or clients. And I’m particularly qualified to create this series because I have over 16 years of social media marketing experience dealing with those same bosses and clients.

This means that, of course, there are certain people that my series isn’t meant for. But for those who are in that group of frustrated social media marketers, I get all sorts of emails every week saying thank you so much for answering that specific frustration that I have. And my channel has grown like wildfire because of it!