Firstly let me say this is not a criticism of clients. You know what you know until someone points out what you don’t know but need to know.
Hence why they come to Friendlier Organics for marketing and business support.
When it comes to business success and effective marketing, almost nothing is more important than knowing your target audience. How can you expect to have effective marketing communications without the knowledge of your customers and wider audience?
However, what if I told you over half the businesses we deal with when we carry out a marketing audit, have missing critical information on their consumers? Resulting in a customer disconnect and often miscommunications.
Reflecting back on our clientele for the last two years, we found that only 35% initially knew the basic demographic information of their target audience, like their name, gender, age and location. When asked to create a series of customer avatars 70% could not provide the information.
Some additional analysis revealed the following:
- Less than half of business owners know their audience’s interests and hobbies, shopping habits, the products they are interested in buying, their purchase history, and where they consume content. Despite access to technology that could easily provide the data.
- A third know the online communities their target audience is a part of and even less know the challenges they are facing. This date has a huge impact on buyer behavior patterns.
- One in six of our clients knew the social causes their target audience cares about – a huge missed opportunity when it comes to expressing your brand’s values, especially when this is a great Public Relations Marketing opportunity.
So why are business owners having such a hard time getting these data points?
Let’s discuss the biggest challenges business owners face in getting the data and turning that into the information they need and identify some solutions to the disconnection many are seeing with their audience.
The Biggest Challenges Marketers Face in Understanding Their Target Audience
As a marketing consultant, I cannot express the importance of marketing management data. Having high-quality data on your target audience is important to succeeding in their business. Quality marketing management data allows for informed decisions about marketing. So why is it such a challenge for marketers to get the data they need?
The biggest challenges in understanding your target boil down to two main issues:
1. Data Privacy Measures
Data privacy legislation and technology providers such as Apple are reducing access to the consumer data they need. In addition to the increase in public breaches in security, consumers are less trusting in sharing their personal data.
This results in business owners missing out on critical data on their target audience, from their online shopping and media such as social media, email, and search engine search consumption habits to their basic demographic information.
2. Evolving Audience Targets
Consumers’ lives have changed drastically over the past few years, and do not stay constant, with the addition of a potential economic downturn or recession, their habits, attitudes, and preferences are likely to continue shifting quickly and buyer behavior patterns will be harder to identify and predict.
The two challenges above are difficult to overcome because they’re actively developing as data privacy regulations tighten and unprecedented events that change consumer behavior continue.
So, what can you do now?
How Can You Improve Their Data Strategy?
1. Gather First-Party Data
A great solution to increased data privacy regulations like Google’s planned phase-out of third-party cookies is gathering your own first-party data.
First-party data can be collected from many sources – your website, surveys, email, SMS, your CRM, and more.
Since first-party data comes directly from your customers, it offers high-quality insights about your audience and allows you to create a personalized experience for them.
2. Use a Single Source of Truth for Marketing Data
A little research showed that only 21% of small business owners say their marketing data is fully integrated with their systems and tools, and as we saw earlier, data not integrating well is a top challenge for small business owners, trying to understand their target audience.
Disconnected marketing data is problematic because you don’t have the full context needed to make data-driven decisions. On the other hand, a single source of truth offers a holistic view of your target audience by connecting all the data points you have.
A single source of truth also improves efficiency by making marketing data more easily accessible for marketers and their collaborators.
3. Keep Your Data Fresh
We talked about how consumers’ lives are changing rapidly and marketers need up-to-date data in order to keep up.
The interests, habits, and attitudes of your target audience probably changed several times over the course of the pandemic. And with a recession looming, your audience will likely change again – so whatever data tracking method you use, make sure your data is regularly updated to keep a pulse on your customers in real time.
Another reason you need up-to-date information on your target audience is so you can pivot your marketing strategy and message in response to the changes your customers are experiencing.
Needless to say, you need a plan for when things go off course. When the next unprecedented event or unexpected challenge arrives, will you have the data you need to adapt?
Unsure if your plans are acceptable for any potential change, reach out for a consultation.
In an ideal world, you would have all the data points you could ever want, but that isn’t always realistic. So let’s end by taking a look at which data points are most helpful.
The Most Helpful Types of Audience Target Data
As a Marketing Consultant, the interests or hobbies of their target audience is the most helpful data point, closely followed by consumers’ shopping habits, where they consume content/media, and the products they are interested in buying.
Basic demographic information, purchase history, and the online communities their target audience is part of are also valuable data points.
A Crisis of Connection
If you’re realizing you might be missing critical information on your target audience, don’t worry, you aren’t alone. We would not be so busy if you were alone with these struggles.
Many businesses are currently experiencing a Crisis of Disconnection, and it goes far beyond poor customer data.
If all of this has caused more concerns than solutions please reach out for an initial free consultation.