Demystifying the DINK Demographic for Creating Brand Personas
The DINK demographic usually has more time and money to spend on themselves, so it’s worthwhile to explore the dual-income, no-kids market. Everybody has heard of the Gen Z, Gen X, Millennial, Baby Boomer, and Greatest Generation. However, the DINK demographic, short for Dual Income and No Kids, has now entered marketing lingo. Since any audience development agency may presume that many couples without kids have more time and disposable income than those with larger families, they’ve become a prime target for consumer marketing. How an audience development agency develops brand personas for the DINK demographic DINK refers to two-income couples who have chosen not to have children. It doesn’t necessarily mean these couples belong a specific age or income group; however, marketers may tend to mostly picture them as Millennials with decent salaries. As for why they’re often associated with Millennials, just last year, even before the COVID crisis, Business Insider mentioned that the U.S. birthrate had declined to its lowest in three decades. A survey attributed the decline mostly to Millennials’ uncertainty about the future. Since the Millennial generation has grown to become the majority of the workforce, they get a lot of attention from marketers anyway. Still, sometimes DINK can refer to members of other generations, even Baby Boomers who are empty nesters. Digging deeper into the DINK generation If some DINK couples decide they’re not ready for parenting, they appear fairly eager for other kinds of experiences. While nobody should try to put all dual-income-no-children couples in one basket, marketers can enjoy great success with this group as a target market with the right approach and product. From the perspective of an audience insights agency, marketers should consider these general observations to succeed with the market: 1. Research target audience demographics Some DINK couples may choose to skip parenthood because they feel uncertain or are simply unwilling to give up their freedom. However, in other cases, the idea of parenthood might not appeal to them or even be possible. Many even choose to delay parenthood but consider it a possibility in the future. That’s why an audience targeting agency should conduct research on specific target market demographics and behavior to better understand their likely audience in order to develop useful buyer personas. 2. Consider marketing innovative products, services, or businesses Even though a DINK couple might not feel ready to make a lifelong commitment of parenthood, they generally tend to be early adapters and interested in innovation. They may also have more time and money to learn about and experience new things. Even if one product doesn’t appear terribly innovative, it’s good to focus upon any fresh or transformative aspects of the business. As an example, several vitamin companies have developed successful apps that help customers figure out which of their brand of supplements will benefit their customer’s health the most. 3. Promote company values In contrast to the image of a DINK couple as very focused upon themselves, many use some of their extra time to volunteer and stay current with social issues. As a generation, most Millennials appear to care about patronizing businesses that share their values. An audience development agency should consider this trait as they develop a picture of their market and the marketing message they intend to send to them. 4. How certain markets may appeal to potential traits of a DINK audience This list explains some of the types of markets that might appeal to a DINK audience: Luxury goods: This market tends to like to share their experiences and not mind paying for value. Nice cars, high-quality, gourmet food, and similar luxury goods can reflect well on them in their own eyes and that of their social circle. Things to do with spare time: Without the demands of getting kids to bed or scheduling babysitters, leisure activities may attract couples without kids. They might take the chance to buy a boat or learn to cook their own gourmet meals. Travel: Couples without children might have an easier time scheduling vacations because they won’t need to book things around school and kid’s activities. They’re also likely to travel further and not need to skimp on a budget vacation because it’s just the two of them. Experiences: Again, innovative experiences will tend to attract DINK couples, and that might include anything from new entertainment and museum special events to a home automation system or solar panels. If the business must market something more ordinary, like soup mix, perhaps they could incorporate a message about eco-friendly packaging or service projects the business supports to demonstrate their corporate values. Why market to the DINK demographic? Forgoing parenthood and having both partners in a marriage work does not necessarily mean a couple enjoys a high income. Still, people without children may also be able to save money over their parenting peers. They may buy or rent smaller houses and apartments and don’t need to share disposable income with kids. Also, dual-income, no-children families may have more free time to enjoy some of the finer things and more energy to invest in learning about them. Having time and money can make them an excellent target market for the right businesses.
CPG Brands: Who Makes Household Decisions in Families?
When it comes to CPG brands, determining the likely marketing audience should be listed at the top of any marketing plan. Find out who decides what to buy. As one of the first steps to develop a marketing plan, a CPG marketing agency will conduct audience research. Obviously, they need to learn as much as they can about the behavior and demographics of consumers who they might attract to their products. If these products appeal to couples of families, the business should determine which member of the household typically makes buying decisions about CPG products. That way, they will know how to effectively target the other steps in their marketing campaign. What CPG marketing agency research reveals about household decision makers for CPG brands Of course, consumer packaged goods come from multiple industries. They can range from pet food to coffee to stockings. Few household members make 100 percent of the decisions about which products or brands to buy. Still, it’s no surprise to see a study on Chain Store Age that found women, typically mothers, make most of the buying choices in average, two-parent families. Some interesting results from this study found: In a typical, traditional family, Mom usually chooses what to buy. Though fathers have recently grown more involved in household purchase decisions, mothers still make most of these choices in 80 percent of families. Still, men have grown more involved in the CPG-shopping process lately. Lately, moms make about two-thirds of the household decisions, compared to about 80 percent in the past. Of course, men tend to make certain kinds of decisions for some CPG products more than women do. For instance, in most traditional families, expect more men than women to buy goods for lawn maintenance and home repair. They’re also slightly more likely to choose items related to autos and tech than they are for more general products. Women made almost always made choices about children’s clothes or toys. In some areas, men and women tend to share buying decisions equally. These include products related to entertainment, furnishings, and appliances. Who buys the groceries? While consumer packaged goods can cover a lot of different areas, people often associate them with items found at the grocery store. Some obvious examples include peanut butter, soap, and coffee. At least in traditional families, Pew Research found that women do at least 80 percent of both the cooking and the shopping. That’s true if a couple has children or not. Couples have started sharing more household chores than they did in the past. At the same time, women usually buy and prepare food most of the time. Pew Research also mentioned that women tend to spend less time doing paid jobs than men do, so that may account for some of the imbalance when it comes to grocery trips and food preparation. Who should a consumer package goods agency target? Of course, it’s impossible to offer a one-size-fit-all answer for all kinds of CPG products. Also, even in cases where one gender or another tended to make some kinds of choices more often, they did not always make them and also probably made some purchases because of influence of the other partner. After all, if a husband expresses a preference for a certain brand of salad dressing or pickles, his wife will probably remember that on her next trip to the supermarket. Similarly, if children ask for a certain kind of socks or a new video game, that request may eventually lead to an adult purchase decision. Even 10 years ago, AdAge promoted the idea that CPG companies should target men more. Even if surveys show that women tend to make two-thirds of household decisions, that still leaves one-third of purchase choices to men. AdAge also pointed out that even though women still do most of the shopping, men do more of it than they used to do. Even a smaller share of a market could add up to a growth opportunity for some CPG companies. Why do marketers need to know who tends to choose their types of product? Marketers need to define their audience before they can make good choices about a number of other factors in their marketing plan. These can range from the platforms used for marketing to the color of the product packaging. Consider these examples: Crazy Egg revealed that women like blue, purple, and green the most, but they tend not to prefer gray, orange, and brown as much. In contrast, men also like blue and green, but they also tend to gravitate to black. Men also tend to dislike orange and brown, but they shy away from purple. Men and women both use social sites, still they may tend to favor different kinds of platforms. For instance, expect to find more women on sites like Pinterest and Facebook and more men on more discussion-oriented sites like Reddit. No consumer package goods agency can generalize about exactly which gender or member of the family makes all the household decisions about CPG brands. This can also vary quite a bit for different types of products, and not all families have the traditional mom, dad, and kids. Still, determining their most likely customers will make plenty of other marketing decisions easier for CPG brands.
Quantitative Vs. Qualitative Marketing Research
You can split marketing research techniques into two basic types — quantitative and qualitative research. Read on to learn the differences between the two. Quantitative research relies upon objective numbers, statistics, and hard facts. In contrast, qualitative user research seeks to explore more subjective questions, such as feelings and motivations. Your deep understanding of the difference between these two kinds of marketing research will help inform decisions that you make about investing in the information your company needs to thrive. Quantitative and qualitative user research examples To better understand the difference between these two disciplines, consider some simple examples of quantitative and qualitative marketing research: Quantitative Marketing Research You can gather broad insights about customer behavior using quantitative marketing research. For example, let’s say that your website currently sells high-quality, coffee-making supplies. Some examples might include coffee makers, filters, and so on. You have a good base of loyal patrons, so you think about adding high-end coffee beans to your online shop in order to increase revenue. How can you decide if your customers will want to buy coffee from you? Often, marketers use surveys to gather quantitative data. Your survey could ask your current customers how often they buy coffee online. Very often, you will give users a choice of a few ranges to make the information easier to collate or graph. So you might begin by asking them if they buy coffee online: Never Weekly Monthly A couple of times a year You may find that 50-percent of your current customers already buy coffee online at least once a month. That could encourage you to consider offering coffee subscriptions to satisfy your customers and of course, generate more revenue. Qualitative Marketing Research The research above helped you discover that your customer base is already open to the idea of buying coffee online. That’s good news, but you still don’t know for certain that you can motivate them to start buying their coffee from you. For that, you can turn to qualitative user research. These are some qualitative marketing research tools you could employ: You can still use surveys but ask more open-ended questions. Instead of asking multiple-choice questions, you might ask your customers where they buy coffee now, why they like that retailer, and what might encourage them to switch. Other qualitative marketing research techniques include focus groups and interviews. Surveys are easier, but the brainstorming aspect of focus groups and interviews can help you uncover surprising insights that you may miss if you simply didn’t know to put the right questions on your survey. Should you rely upon quantitative or qualitative marketing research? Do you need quantitative or qualitative data to better understand your marketplace? Experienced marketers will generally suggest gathering both kinds of information in order to gain deep insights about any aspect of a business: Quantitative information can give you a big-picture overview of customer behavior. You may also find it easy to gather numbers with surveys or even your own website’s analytics. Generally, you can rapidly plot or analyze these numbers to make them easy to understand. It’s easy to say how much time average visitors spend on your website, how many prospects abandon shopping carts, or how often customers buy coffee. At the same time, quantitative data is better at describing behavior than motivation. Since you won’t gather such neat, ordered answers as you would with multiple-choice, quantitative questions, it may take more time to organize qualitative answers into meaningful trends. Still, the more flexible and subjective nature of qualitative research can uncover surprising insights into consumer preferences and motivations. Your research group may answer questions you didn’t even think to ask. Also, you can find tools to help you analyze unstructured data. For instance, some software can pick out common and related words or phrases and arrange them into comprehensible diagrams. Finding good quantitative and qualitative research companies Of course, you might not believe you have the time or background to properly design and conduct market research all by yourself. You can work with quantitative or qualitative research companies. A good research firm should have the experience and training to provide the answers to your marketing questions. Right at the beginning, they should learn enough about your business concerns to help you decide if you should focus upon quantitative research, qualitative research, or a combination of both. According to CFR, a market research company, you need to take care when asking for advice from some companies before engaging them to do your research. In the real world, many researchers have more experience with one discipline over the other. Naturally, that experience can give them an unconscious bias. On the other hand, you can certainly find a quantitative and qualitative marketing research agency with experience in both types of research and just as importance, the skill to blend them for the best results. Why market research matters You know that a stronger understanding of consumers will give you the chance to serve them better. In turn, that good relationship will help you retain loyal customers and attract new ones. The insights you gain can help inform your website design, the products you offer, and the kind of advertisements you run. Before you plan your research, you need to decide if you should rely upon quantitative, qualitative, or a mix of the two. If you seek help from a marketing research company, make certain that they have experience to handle them both.
Using Lookalike Modeling to Attract New Customers
Use lookalike modeling to find new customers with similar traits to your current ones. Read on to explore how it can improve your marketing efforts. As a business owner, have you ever wished you could clone your best customers? Modern business tech has not advanced quite that far yet. You can’t exactly duplicate your existing base of customers; however, you can grow it. Understanding lookalike modeling With lookalike audience targeting, you can select specific traits of your current consumers or leads. Your original source could come from email lists, social marketing sites, tracking pixels of website visitors, or even third-party sources. Then you match the common traits from your source with consumers in a wider pool to generate a new audience. As a simple example, say American women between 28 and 42 tend to buy the most children’s shoes from your website. You could match those specific traits to target direct-to-consumer advertising. Since you’re matching traits, you have a better chance to display appropriate ads over just showing your advertising to everybody. That gives you a good chance to improve your ratio of ad clicks and conversions. Of course, the more information that you have about your existing and current audience, the better chance you have to benefit. For instance, it might help to know if these women are mothers, have a certain income level, and so on. Still, any amount of targeting to new people that you can base off of traits from current prospects or customers should yield better results than not targeting at all. Lookalike modeling tools Of course, you will need a way to automate the process of finding a new audience that matches one of your current ones. You can find plenty of alternatives to help you with this. Explore Facebook Lookalike Audiences and Adobe Audience Manager to understand how businesses use technology to create lookalike audiences. Facebook Lookalike Audiences If you’re looking for a simple introduction to a lookalike modeling, you should know that Facebook offers a feature they call Facebook Lookalike Audiences. This gives you a way to target new customers based upon certain qualities of an existing custom audience. Some sources for your custom audience could include your existing Facebook followers, customer records, pixel tracking, or an email list. When you create your custom audience, Facebook will do the work of finding common traits in order to create your new audience from their own vast base of users. Facebook’s tools look fairly simple to use, but you have to give up some control. You can set location and audience size. However, the system chooses and matches traits. According to Facebook, your two audiences will more closely match each other if you choose a smaller audience. In turn, it will start to diverge more if you pick a bigger one. Because of the way their algorithm works, they suggest an audience size of between 1,000 and 50,000 people. However, Facebook does allow you to create multiple lookalike audiences to use for ad targeting. Adobe Audience Manager If you work with a lookalike modeling agency, they may suggest a more sophisticated and flexible tool, like Adobe Audience Manager. With Audience Manager, you can trust the system to match traits or choose your own. You also have control over time intervals and data sources. Data sources could include either your own or third-party customer bases. This tool offers such sophisticated features as A/B testing, in-depth analytics, and built-in privacy controls. Most of all, you’re not locked into using Facebook advertising. While software like Adobe Audience may prove somewhat more complex to use than Facebook Lookalike Audiences, it’s more flexible. Making the most of lookalike audience targeting As a marketer, you’ve probably already heard about the benefits of creating buyer personas. When you take the time to get to know your current customers, you have a better chance to connect with other people who have similar motivations and habits. Lookalike targeting takes this one step further because you can use what you know in order to grow your audience and your customer base. Of course, you can use this kind of targeting on your database of warm leads in order to market things that similar customers have purchased. You might even apply it to your existing customer base for upsells. Lookalike modeling can really shine when you need to approach a cold audience that doesn’t already have a strong introduction to your business. Because you can use traits from existing customers or prospects, you should have better conversions than if you could not pull specific traits to base your targeting upon. Since you know you’re working with a cold audience, some marketers say they get the most value by crafting ads that build trust more than overt sales. You might run split tests with various ads to see how this works for your own services or products. For instance, you could try a split test with direct ads against more subtle informational content that leads to a subscription form. Either way, lookalike audience targeting gives you a good opportunity to warm up a cold audience and even to turn them into your customers.
Why Marketing Intelligence is Essential For New Business
In order to succeed, you must understand that you don’t operate your company in a vacuum that only contains you and your customers. Competitive marketing intelligence refers to gathering data about business competitors and your overall market. Not only does this kind of information help you understand direct competitors, it also gives you insights about their customers, marketing tactics, suppliers, and partners. Find out how to collect competitive intelligence and why it’s particularly important for new businesses. Why new businesses need competitive marketing intelligence According to a 2020 survey from Crayon, a company that offers business intelligence solutions, 94 percent of all businesses invest in competitive intelligence. As important as large and established companies find this information, it’s even more vital to startups. After you’ve operated your business for some time, you’ll have more information about your own customers and other aspects of your market. When you’re just starting, you’ll lack the internal data and experience to guide decisions. For instance: After you’ve made a few hundred sales, you will start to understand the demographics and behavior of your typical consumers. You can use that intelligence to satisfy current customers better. You may also employ it to plan and target marketing campaigns to attract new customers, based upon the profiles of your current ones. You’ll have had a chance to investigate and test suppliers, distributors, and business processes. This information will help you work more efficiently. Without outside intelligence, you might need to suffer a long learning curve. All ages and sizes of businesses can benefit from competitive research; however, you can see that it’s particularly vital for new companies. Lucky for you, plenty of market intelligence companies offer accessible services to small businesses these days. Digital technology can provide a tiny startup with the same sorts of business intelligence solutions that large companies rely upon. Should your new business gather your own competitive market research? If you can’t possibly budget for an internal department to supply intelligence, you can find a market research company with affordable services that have been tailored for your business stage. Actually, employing a third-party marketing research agency can offer both new and established benefits some benefits: Different perspectives: All sorts of businesses can benefit from a second set of eyes. Focused business founders drive themselves so hard to spark their business that it’s hard to remain objective sometimes. Also, new businesses can particularly benefit from a marketing research company with experience helping similar small companies. Technology expertise: In this digital age, marketing intelligence researchers rely upon an array of sophisticated tools. These can range from advertising platforms to social media monitoring to tools that allow companies to spy on their competitor’s search marketing campaigns. Research consultants should already know how to maximize the potential of these tools to provide you with the insights that you need. Efficient use of time: Unless you’re starting a marketing intelligence agency, you will want to focus upon other primary business goals. While your researchers do their jobs, you can do yours. You’re bound to enjoy faster results by relying upon experienced marketers than if you tried to handle your main responsibilities and intelligence research. You should also understand that the nature of competitive intelligence may vary wildly for different kinds of companies. For instance an ecommerce site that sells common physical goods may most have an interest in a competitor’s marketing. However, a healthcare industry business may need to expand its intelligence to current regulations and political trends. Also, you might perform some kinds of competitive market research by using online tools. However, such accessible and low-hanging fruit might not provide you with enough information to truly understand your business climate or competitors. Just a small sample of other sources might include journals, newspapers, conferences, government publications, and business directories. You may not always need to spend a lot of money to benefit from these sources, but you will need to spend time and of course, know where to look. Kinds of competitive intelligence for new businesses Market researchers generally group competitive marketing intelligence into two basic types: Strategic marketing intelligence: Strategic intelligence seeks to learn about competitors and the broader business environment. It’s supported by a long-term plan that will help and sometimes even determine primary business goals. For example, Unilever did well by promoting many of its products as sustainable brand, and it is those brands that drive the most growth and sales for the parent company. They set this goal after gathering intelligence about the motivations of consumers for the types of soap and tea they market and the successful efforts of some competitors. Tactical marketing intelligence: Tactical marketing intelligence refers to the short-term actions that will support the business strategy and achieve goals. Let’s say your company also wanted to promote yourself as a sustainable company. This could be personally important to you and according to your intelligence, important to your target audience. When to gather competitive marketing intelligence? Ideally, you should begin gathering strategic research before you even solidify your business plan and goals. You may have a great business idea, but insights you gain from your intelligence will help you refine it. Once you’ve defined goals, you can begin to gain tactical intelligence in order to map out the best ways to achieve them.
Get to Know Your Customers with Consumer Insights Marketing
Consumer insights marketing can help you understand your audience’s motivation, perspective, and behavior so you can discover more opportunities. As a business owner, you probably think you know your customers pretty well. You might be right, but these days, you need to go beyond some general demographics in order to obtain true consumer insights. Beyond the likely age, gender, or even actions of current or future customers, you will benefit by digging deeper into the motivation, perspective, and information that drives their behavior. Find out how consumer insight marketing can yield surprising information and even better, great results. Why focus upon consumer insights marketing? In an era when a consumer’s experience with a company outweighs the products they offer, attention to consumer insight marketing will help you connect with customers. For example, you may have some idea that your customers mostly base their purchase decisions upon such objective and obvious measures as product quality and price. Deloitte, a prominent consumer insights company, ran a large survey in the US, UK, Brazil, and China for 2020. According to their consumer behavior analysis, a sizable percentage of respondents said they considered these measures when deciding which business to buy from: How businesses treat employees: 28 percent How businesses treat the environment: 22 percent How businesses treat their communities: 19 percent For your own business, your customer base may vary somewhat. On the other hand, knowing that about 20 percent of your customers want to patronize companies that care about their employees, the environment, and their community could certainly inform your marketing. For example, you might focus upon social posts and ads that introduce enthusiastic employees or highlight your contribution to worthy causes. In fact, consumer insights marketing may have even more importance than it did only a year ago. Deloitte noted that they ran a similar survey in 2019. At that point, their consumer insights found that most customers still cared about price and quality the most. This year’s survey found that 55 percent of consumers think businesses have a responsibility to support issues that relate to their purpose. Deloitte concluded that companies that fail to demonstrate they align with consumer motivations risk getting displaced by businesses that do a better job. On the other hand, understanding and aligning with their customer’s point of view gives businesses an advantage of competition. How consumer insights marketing will help your business compete As a real-world example, Unilever has 28 brands they market as good choices for people interested in sustainable living. These include such well-known names as Lipton, Dove, and Vaseline. Considered sustainable-living products, they deliver the bulk of Unilever’s revenue and also have enjoyed more rapid growth than the company’s other brands. Such items as tea, soap, and petroleum jelly appear pretty interchangeable, but Unilever did a good job of differentiating them as sustainable in order to grow its market share. Certainly, consumers still care about price and quality; however, in a crowded market, knowing what extra factors will prompt customers to favor one company over another can make all the difference. How to gather consumer insights By now, you might wonder how you can possibly start to understand your customer’s motivations and perceptions. If you lack the time or training, you can find market research services that offer affordable packages for all sizes and kinds of businesses. The smaller and newer your company, the more valuable you may find this sort of help. On the other hand, you can begin by studying general consumer behavior analysis, such as that provided by the Deloitte survey mentioned above. Even better, you should start to monitor your own customers on social media or offer surveys. If you’re starting a new business, you may not have many customers yet. At the same time, you can try to peek at your potential competitors’ customers to understand why they buy from other businesses. You might also try setting up a booth at a trade show or local event. Not only will this give you a chance to introduce more people to your brand, you will also have the opportunity to meet the kinds of people who have an interest in the products or services that you offer. Start conversations with people, so that you can learn what motivated them to make similar purchases in the past and could prompt them to buy from you in the future. Why start investing in consumer insights today? In any case, you should know that consumer insights marketing has become more than just the latest marketing term. No matter what you sell, you can’t assume that price and quality completely drive customer behavior. In fact, the more you know about your customer’s motivations to prefer one company over another, the less you may need to compete on price. In fact, getting customers to identify with your company in positive ways is a type of marketing that money almost can’t buy. On the other hand, you can achieve that beneficial status if you invest in consumer behavior analysis and work to always view your business through your customers’ eyes. In any case, if you thought that all of your customers were simply getting online compare prices, you should be pleasantly surprised to learn that you can find other ways to earn their business. You just need to figure out how to do it, and that’s exactly why you need consumer insights.
Follow Your Customer Experience Journey to Improve Your ROI
Mapping the customer experience journey will let you visualize and gain insights about the steps customers take when they interact with your business. As an online business marketer, you can think of a customer experience journey as a description of each person’s behavior as they interact with your website. As a typical map helps you visualize a journey, consumer journey mapping will let you visualize and gain insights about the steps customers take when they interact with your business. In turn, you uncover consumer motivations and those aspects of their experience that you could improve upon in order to increase customer satisfaction and of course, revenues and profits. What is a user journey map? Harvard Business Review defined a user journey map as a diagram used to illustrate the steps your customers take to interact with your company. More complex maps may attempt to describe every step in the customer’s journey but some may just focus on a specific path for some product or site feature. For example, you might include initial brand awareness, from ads or social media. You can even extend the map to contain possible offline interactions with your business. Harvard Business Review mentioned that including more touchpoints could make the document more complex but in some cases, more useful. If you’re mostly focused on just your website, you might only include online actions. In any case, you create a timeline of a customer journey. You might draw points on the timeline that begin with customer awareness and research and end with a purchase and the after-purchase experience. For each stage, you can use this framework: Action: This refers to the actions the consumer took at the time to move along to the next step. In the awareness phase, the customer might have viewed one of your social or YouTube videos or found your site via search. Motivations: What motivated the consumer to take the next step in their journey. Perhaps your social video suggested a solution to some problem the consumer had or offered a cheaper alternative. Questions: Which uncertainties might prevent the customer from advancing along your funnel to the next stage? Perhaps the potential customer needs more information to understand why your brand offers the best choice in a complex or crowded market. Barriers: Besides a lack of information, are there any other obstacles that work against the consumer’s motivations? Some examples could include the cost or the buying process. Gathering information to map the customer decision journey To begin mapping out an online consumer decision journey, you should gather two kinds of information: Website analytics: You should have a fairly easy time figuring out how you customers used your website. For instance, the website analytics will tell you were visitors came from, which features they used, and how long they stayed. If you have trouble sorting out all the information you can gather from your analytics, a customer journey agency may prove a helpful resource. Consumer research: While it’s fairly easy to learn what your website visitors do, it’s a little tougher to understand why they behave the way they do. For instance, a high percentage of visitors might abandon shopping carts before they buy. Maybe they think you charge too much for shipping or don’t offer the right payment options, but sometimes, you can’t know for sure. To make the most of your consumer journey mapping, you might monitor social media or gather surveys or other kinds of feedback. Again, almost every marketer has a much easier time observing the decisions consumers make than knowing exactly why they make them. That’s another reason why creating your customer experience journey map will give you a fantastic chance to understand customers better. For example, let’s say many customers do abandon shopping carts, and you’re not certain if they’re turned off by shipping charges, payment options, or something else. Certainly, you can check social media, surveys, and other feedback to see if you can find any helpful trends. Even better, you might use split tests to let changes in behavior suggest motives. If adding free shipping with a minimum order or reducing all shipping helps improve sales, you will know that shipping charges matter to your market. As with deciphering complex analytics, a customer journey agency may help you find the best ways to sort out complex behaviors. Buyer personas The Shopify Blog suggests using buyer personas as another tool that can help you develop better maps and gain more understanding of your customers. For instance: In the best case, you could encourage recent customers to answer survey questions that can tell you exactly what they did and did not like about the process of interacting with your business. You can ask them why they researched products, what motivated them to choose your business, and of course, if they have any suggestions for improvement. Since understanding motivations can provide you with such valuable insights in order to attract new customers and retain old ones, you might encourage people to complete your surveys with a discount code, extra points in your loyalty club, a free shipping offer. The importance of consumer journey mapping These days, businesses live and die by the experience that they offer customers. Brian Solis, the author of “X: The Experience When Business Meets Design,” says that customer experience now exceeds product in importance. Consumers do search for facts when they research brands, products, and marketplaces. But mostly, they remember how you make them feel. Consumer journey mapping will help you understand the customer’s experience from their own point-of-view, and that’s how you can create a successful, customer-focused company.
Teamwork is an Essential Part in Marketing Communication
Marketing can be defined as all the different activities that are involved in making products available to satisfy the needs of the customers, while at the same time generating profits for the manufacturers and distributors. It is a complex process and it involves the following: Designing a product that meets customer specifications which many need the use of marketing research to determine what the customers needs. Promoting the products so that people may get to know the product through marketing communications and Advertising. Setting the price and making the product available to the population through vending outlets. Marketing communications can be described as the communication that is used in the promotion phase of the product. It is the communication between the marketing division or the marketing efforts of a company and the market and it is usually geared towards the promotion of the product. Marketing communication can usually be handled in-house or can be sub-contracted to a marketing agency. The people in the marketing communication sector that are involved with advertising, branding, direct marketing to customers, graphic design of the product and product containers, packaging, sales and sales promotion. They are generally involved with creating and delivering messages to the public in an attempt to move them to develop an affinity with the company and to buy the products of the company. They are usually known as marketing communicators, and it is more usual than not a team effort, than the work of a single individual. This can either mean having a team of people to work in these different processes or taking on one marketing agency that does this, or coordinating the efforts of different specialized agencies like graphic design agencies, advertising agencies and market research agencies. Marketing communication can be said to be divided into 5 stages from the time the message is conceived and delivered to the time the messages are received and then possible action taken by the receiver to change him from the receiver of a marketing message to a consumer. The stages in the process are: Sender – which represents the marketing team that delivers an idea to the marketing communication team Encoding – represents the part of the process where the communicator takes the message and transforms it into eye-catching or step-changing visual adverts or tunes or a mixture of all as in audio visual ads Transmission – which represents the stage where the messages are transmitted through radio, tv the internet and any other device chosen by the company Decoding – represents the stage when the consumer receives the image and decodes it; usually, it has to do with thinking in the pattern that the marketer wants them to think Receiver – the message is now with received by the target audience and the receiver can then make a decision to respond and buy, take the subscription or develop a way of thinking as desired. Therefore, from the processes above it can be seen that teamwork is essential in marketing communication as the process will be almost impossible for a single individual to create and deliver successfully alone. In general, the people who develop the ideas and strategies in marketing research are usually analysts, and those that take the results of these ideas and recommendations to create a new product are usually different from those that will also use these same ideas to create advertising for the product. “Without a clear idea of what the company goals are, or the kind quality of the product and who they are trying to reach, marketing communicators will not be able to create and transmit a convincing message to the consumers. Therefore teamwork is very much essential to the success of any marketing campaign.” A marketing campaign team will usually involve people from account planning, account management, creative talent production, media departments and specialist in TV ads, radio ads, billboard advertisers as well as internet and social media advertisers. All these people need to be managed and they need to work with each other. Without a collective team spirit, and coordination it will be a chaotic situation and so the marketing communication team has to work with coordinating these heads and assigning tasks to each individual so that the team works flawlessly and delivers the end products as required. Good coordination of the team will usually lead to convincing messages being sent to the consumer which will ultimately end in making sales and to convert the receiver of the messages to a client. Looking for a comprehensive partnership with an agency that understands the importance of teamwork in marketing communication? Contact us today to build your synergistic strategy.
Putting the Persona in Persona-Based Marketing
If you want to understand your audience, identify their pain points and win them over, persona-based marketing is critically important. Know Your Customer — it’s the First Commandment of Marketing. It’s also the reason why persona-based marketing is so critically important for modern brands. Without identifying who your customers are, you can’t understand what motivates them, identify their pain points and connect with them. With that in mind, let’s take a closer look at why persona-based marketing is a powerful tool for advertisers, marketers and brands. Putting the persona in persona-based marketing So how do brands get their feet wet in persona-based marketing? First, it’s necessary to create detailed profiles of your potential buyers. These buyer personas then serve as the core of your targeted marketing strategy; they are idealized representations of the audience most likely to purchase your products and services. A buyer persona is a comprehensive image of a customer that reflects who they are, what motivates them and their propensity to act through each stage of the sales cycle. Some businesses will only need to develop two or three personas, others may be better served by a dozen or more. These personas are based on a variety of sources, including: Market research into probable buyers, including surveys and in-person interviews. This research provides a fuller picture of the wants, needs and tendencies of a brand’s likely market. Insights and feedback gleaned from existing customers. The same research process can be applied to a brand’s current client set, and this process often provides unique insights, given that these audiences are already familiar with the products or services on offer. Brands also often work with their in-house sales team to learn more about existing and potential customers. Sourced and analyzed consumer data. Customers often say they want one thing, then go buy another. Our words and intentions don’t always reflect our actions, and objective data can help provide another window into what truly moves buyers. Broader market, industry and demographic information. This data can provide critical context during the brand persona creation process. Such information allows brands to take a wider angle view, and anticipate looming changes within markets and industries. If you can anticipate these changes, you can also anticipate how customers may be affected. Buyer persona categorization Brands developing persona-based marketing strategies should also understand that different classes of buyers require varying approaches. For example, when dealing with individual buyers (someone who makes a one-time retail purchase, for example), you’d create a single persona type with a variety of personas to fit within that type. A persona development agency can help you accomplish this task. B2B operations, however, are often led by sales teams rather than a single buyer. C suite executives, sales leaders, marketing leaders etc. may all be involved in the procurement/sales process. In such cases, brands create team-based personas. These often include a dedicated persona for each member of the purchasing team — personas that outline the specific prerogatives inherent to each position. For example, a team persona designed for a Chief Financial Officer would focus on pricing issues, ROI and other monetary motivators. Working with the right persona development agency Buyer persona development, when done at a high level, requires research expertise, industry knowledge and an advanced grasp of marketing strategy. It’s often a tall order for brands to accomplish this without outside help. At Bigeye, we’re experts at creating finely targeted buyer personas supported by experience and insight. Contact us today to learn more about what the right agency can do for you.
Four Audience Targeting Strategies for Your Product
Audience targeting can help you identify who your ideal customers are and help you create relevant and resonant marketing messages. Few things are sadder than wasted potential — and that applies to both people and products. If you build a great product or service and can’t get it in front of the right audiences, your odds of realizing its potential are slim. This is one reason why audience targeting is so critically important. Audience targeting 101 The practice of audience targeting is straightforward: You take a large customer segment and break it down into smaller groups in order to target likely buyers within these groups. The animating principle of audience segmentation is this: General messages sent to large undifferentiated audiences don’t resonate the same way that specific messages sent to highly targeted audiences do. In other words, why waste your time selling your product or service to people who aren’t interested? Instead, find the people who are interested and send them messages custom-designed to appeal to their wants, needs and interests. Audience segmentation comes in four general types: Geographic: The state, city, neighborhood etc. where your audience lives. Behavioral: This evaluates spending habits, brand interactions etc. Demographics: Includes age, gender, marital status, income level, education level etc. Psychographic: Personality, beliefs, values, interests etc. By considering these four factors, brands can begin to develop highly tailored audience segments and deliver customized marketing messages. This allows brands to speak directly to consumers, creating specific messages for specific audiences. This creates higher-quality leads, more loyal customers, and differentiates your brand from others. Smart strategies for audience targeting In order to get maximum value from your audience targeting efforts, it’s important to lay the groundwork by following some tried and true segmentation strategies. Some of the most impactful strategies include the following: Begin with buyer personas. The buyer persona is the foundational document for targeting purposes. These personas are descriptions of your ideal customers (some businesses may have two or three, others up to a dozen). These personas are constructed from market research, internal data, demographic data, and other sources. Once a brand has well-defined buyer personas in place, the process of targeting specific audiences becomes viable. Use an identity graph. Such graphs are powerful algorithmic tools for identifying who your highest-spending customers are and where you can reach them. By analyzing mobile advertising IDs and email address data, brands can gain deep insight into what potential customers are searching for along with their purchasing behavior. Use Facebook and other social platforms for custom targeting. It’s not the most complex approach, but Facebook has more information on our interests than any other organization. It’s no stretch to say Facebook knows most of its users better than they know themselves. Brands can use Facebook’s backend to set up demographic, behavioral and psychographic profiles that target the right audiences. AI-assisted chatbots. With the right design and programming, a chatbot can significantly improve UX and glean critical targeting data from site or app visitors. This data can be used to determine whether visitors fall within target markets. Marketing messages can then be tailored according to this segmentation. Locating the ideal audience insights agency Audience targeting has long been a critical part of advertising and marketing, but today’s digital tools are making the job easier than ever before. At Bigeye we have the domain expertise and technological resources to help you find the right audience and serve them with the perfect messages.