The Internet is a powerful means to use to connect with a wide audience and deliver an equally wide and varied range of information. However, you need to keep in mind the purpose and target audience of your interactive marketing campaign.

Case in point:

During a widespread power outage following an ice storm, a local radio station here in Louisville referenced news and information related to the blackout. The specific details were not provided on the air. Instead, listeners were told to go to the station’s website to access this information that would help them deal with the blackout. You’d think that the referenced information was intended to be made available via mobile Web, but the site was not friendly to cell phones (at least not mine!).

While the increasing popularity of the iPhone and availability of Wi-Max and 3G networks make us more connected than ever, it still should not be assumed that this access is available to everybody. What about the rest of the audience who are listening in on a battery powered radio from their cold, darkened, and electricity-free homes? They certainly couldn’t have felt like the radio station cared about them, as this vital information wasn’t made available to them.

Sometimes what is left out sends the loudest message of all. This is a truth that apparently is not as self-evident as you might think, but one you should never forget if you want your audience to believe that you really care.

A greeting card manufacturer once made a similar mistake when it launched a line of cards geared for aging Baby Boomers. Their promotional content played up the positive side of aging, which the manufacturer thought would appeal to the egos of these aging consumers. What the card maker didn’t consider was that Baby Boomers don’t like being perceived as old and definitely didn’t want to be seen shopping in the “old people� section of the store. And as a result, none did. This serious misreading of their targeted audience ultimately led to the line being discontinued.

No one can create effective marketing content without a clear understanding of the target audience.  This means that, before you type a single word, you have to do your homework.  You must discover the most effective way to directly connect to your audience, and the only way to do that is work with a team who can provide reliable, clear market research data.
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Join Emily Carroll and Scott Million as they discuss how Demographics and Psychographics can be used to more effective plan interactive media spends.

 

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Brands need buzz.  It’s a marketing necessity, especially for brands reaching out to consumers online.  Generating this buzz, however, is the hard part.  If the online community isn’t interested, it can be difficult to get them talking about a brand.  To clear this hurdle, some brands have taken the somewhat controversial step of reaching out to the shapers of online conversation themselves.  By tapping influential bloggers to create content about them, these brands are generating online buzz and increasing brand awareness from the inside out.

There is a history of negative backlash, however, for bloggers who engage in this sort of practice.  Critics have expressed concern that this apparent shilling for a brand is a conflict of interest for a blogger.  If you want to do that, some have protested, why stop there and start selling your offline opinions as well?
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Understanding who your target audience is can be the difference between an ad campaign that hits all the right notes and one that falls flat as a pancake. Knowing how your target consumers will react to your marketing efforts requires more than just traditional demographic information—that’s just the tip of the iceberg. For a brand to really know who it’s pitching to, a deeper dig into its audience’s psyche—their likes, dislikes, behaviors, and tendencies—is needed.

While performing target market analysis for LeapFrog clients, I have the opportunity to use a lot of great tools, including Mediamark Research’s Survey of the American Consumer database. Mediamark Research, Inc. (MRI) surveys American consumers in order to come up with a very specific and thorough sense of not only their demographic information (e.g., who they are, where they live, etc.) but also what interests them and drives their behavior. MRI can place over 30 years worth of this exact type of consumer information right at my fingertips.
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