Fortunately, we now can use psychographic, behavioral and sociographic data to supplement information about broad demographic segments in order to better plan and target marketing communications. In addition, we can analyze and account for environmental and other external factors which may affect communication with a particular target audience, such as transaction, behavioral and trigger based messaging. By further segmenting the broad traditional age-based demographic categories, we can begin to craft our messaging more effectively by analyzing and understanding social status, group interaction and buying habits.
After demographic segmentation – the very tip of the starting point in a complicated data segmentation formula – the next step in focusing on your target audience is psychographic segmentation sorting an audience segment along more behavioral lines related to attitudes, interests, needs, wants, values, beliefs, personality or lifestyle. Psychographic variables help us take into account the cultural implications of both audience and media-use diversity and use that information as a tool to further refine your audiences.
This type of analysis allows us to think of individuals in a target audience segment in very concrete terms, and in great detail. By combining the various types of research data available to us as well as well as consumer environmental and behavioral info and progression in the buying cycle, we can understand a lot about each of the members of the segment: what turns them on; what turns them off; which terms catch their attention; what holds their attention; what makes them tune out; and what brings them to the next level in the buying sequence.
In short, with good, objective research data from a variety of sources and solid experience in analyzing and applying that research, along with the deployment of dynamic marketing funnels, we can know with confidence how to communicate persuasively and engagingly with any segment of the target audience.
Advancing computer capabilities and networks are also allowing us to converge the information systems in businesses. Instead of marketing, operations, customer service and accounting all operating independently and often on different and incompatible platforms, we can now link all these together to share and benefit from the continuous flow of real-time data and communications. The marketing department can know immediately when a customer makes a purchase and can automatically generate a follow-up communication for customer service and add-on sales. Customer service has for years now had a complete and real-time current record of a customer’s activity on everything from initial purchase to billing and payment patterns.
Now, with convergence, we can deploy it seamlessly to the front lines of our marketing battles, enabling enterprise marketing intelligence, accountability, transparency and efficiency.
Our depth of experience across a breadth of industries and target audiences allows us to analyze data more efficiently and make better decisions based on our analysis. This experience allows us to sort through the gray areas of target audience behavior to make clear, black and white decisions about how best to communicate with them. Our evidence-based, hybrid strategic process of dynamic data segmentation generates strategies that we can recommend with an extremely high level of confidence.