Ch.3
Most common characteristics marketers use to identify and profile target markets are:
Demographics, geographics, and lifestyle or psychographics.
Audience Targeting on Facebook
Facebook's initial targeting options for brand pages were demographics, specifically: - Gender - Relationship Status - Educational Status - Age - Location - Language Later Facebook introduced targeting by interests that are supplied by the brand as they develop the post.
Final step in Media Plan
Final step in the media plan is to optimize the postings on each social channel so they will be best attended to by the target audience. Each channel has its own best days and times of day to post. Posts themselves need to be configured to meet the criteria of the specific platform in order to achieve prominence on it. Good SMM requires that platforms be carefully chosen to reach the right target audiences.
When looking at Mobile Marketing on Social Networks there are two important warnings:
First is that not all platforms offer all the types of targeting listed and some offer their own special targeting options in addition to the ones listed. It depends on the type of data they obtain from their users. Second is that advertisers usually receive new targeting options first, with brand pages receiving them at a later date. The social media marketer must carefully examine the targeting options for each platform.
Difference of Targeting Brand Posts and Targeting Ads
First, brand posts are owned media with no advertising costs. Ads on social media platforms are paid media, usually pay-per- click (PPC) advertising or sponsored posts; either way there is a cost. Second, there is the technology issue. Since advertisers are paying for their media space, they usually get the targeting options first, often long before they are available to brand pages. The result is that brand pages generally have a more limited set of targeting options than do ads.
Most influential of Marketers who are developing their own brand personas is the Social Technographics Profile, pioneered at Forrester Research in 2012 and updated with new research data each year since.
The Social Technographics Profile uses demographics such as age, location, and gender to group social media users into personas based on their social media activities. Technographics is the methodology by which Forrester surveys consumers, similar to demographics and psychographics but restricted to technology behaviors.
Media Mix
The media mix includes the social platforms that will be used in the campaign. It also includes other online media like email or online advertising as well as traditional offline media.
Challenges for Digital Marketers
The right person to get The right content At the right place At the right time In the right format In the right language On the right device
Ad Targeting on Selected Platforms
As of late 2015 Facebook is the only major platform that offers data based targeting options to brand pages. Virtually all, however, offer targeting to advertisers.
Ways Marketers can use wealth of data and insights it provides to target specific audiences:
- Behavioral targeting based on purchase behavior or behaviors that convey intent like search behaviors - Connection targeting based on the type of connection to your brand page, a Facebook fan, for example - Interest targeting based on self-reported interests and page-related behaviors like search - Look-alike targeting that identifies people like the ones who have been successful targets in the past - Custom targeting that allows the marketer to upload his own data, an email list, for example - Location targeting based on the location provided in the user's profile or by geo-targeting data, which determines the user's current location. Mobile Marketing on Social Networks include: o Send offers to customers while they are in the vicinity of a retail store o Send personalized coupons to customers while they are in stores o Help customers find the location of items in the store
The Social Technographics Profile consists of the following personas:
- Creators develop blogs, articles, videos, music, images, and art, and then upload them to social media platforms and are at the top of ladder. - Conversationalists participate in group discussions, engage in conversations on Twitter, and update their statuses on Facebook and LinkedIn. - Critics evaluate and comment on content produced by creators and conversationalists, post product ratings or reviews, comment on blogs, and participate in community's discussion forums, as well as correct wiki articles. - Collectors upload and save favorites on bookmarking sites such as Delicious, vote on content on sites such as Digg, tag photos on sites such as Flickr, subscribe to RSS feeds to automatically receive new blog posts, and perform the valuable function of helping to organize and categorize content on the social web. - Joiners interact on social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and Eon. - Spectators consume the content that others produce, such as blogs, videos, podcasts, forums, reviews, and so on. - Inactives are Internet consumers who are not involved in social media. ----- The Social Technographics ladder not only reveals what people are doing on the social web but, perhaps just as important, where they are doing it. To reach their optimal target market, social media marketers must know where to aim and the Social Technographics ladder provides a helpful set of persona profiles to assist in understanding the target audience.
Three-Step Persona Development Cycle created by Michelle Golden:
- Identify Persona roles, listing all relevant personas by role. - List needs and situational triggers from personas' perspectives, defining concerns, symptoms, and problems. - Create Messaging Objectives suited to each persona's needs that you have the expertise to address (and note those that you don't).
Best Practices for Targeting Branded Posts In order to obtain the most precision in targeting of social media audiences marketers should:
- Understand what platforms are used by the target audience and how they are used. Brands must monitor changes and give careful consideration to what they mean for their brand and the brand's activity on social media. - Optimize content and posting schedule for each platform. Different audiences tend to use different platforms. The same audience may use different platforms in different ways. - Use the targeting capabilities of each platform. Whether it is directing posts by hashtag on Twitter or emoji hashtags on Instagram or using the Face- book options to target to specific demographics or specific locations or a specific demographic in a specific location, the targeting possibilities offered by platforms are rich and getting richer. - Monitor results on each platform and continue to improve content engagement and overall marketing effectiveness. The brand's own data provides the best foundation for future campaigns, although it may need to be supplemented by outside data. ---- Successful SMM targeting is more than just the right content to the right person. The message must also be received at the right place, at the right time, in the appropriate format, in the correct language, and on the right device.
Steps in Targeting SMM Campaigns
1. Define Target Audience and Segments Demographics Lifestyles Media Use - Internet Use Behaviors - Mobile Use Behaviors - Offline Use Behaviors 2. Create Personas for Each Segment Persona Roles Needs Behavioral Triggers for Each Role Messaging Objectives for Each Role 3. Develop Media Plan for Each Targeted Segment Messaging Objectives Media Mix Media Scheduling Evaluation and More 4. Optimize Media Schedule and Posts Best Days, Times to Post Optimize Post for Platform
Steps in SMM Audience Targeting
1. Identifying the target audience and audience segments.
The Steps of Persona Development cycle can be broken down in more detail.
First, think of a few well-known companies or consumer groups that are relevant to a specific industry or business. Focus on buyer roles or buyer personas: those who make decisions about which products or services to spend money on. For a firm this could be the chief financial officer or general counsel, while in a household it would be the person who spends the majority of that household's income. Also, consider external stakeholders who are indirectly influenced by the buyer's decision; these may be taxpayers, donors, employees, or regulatory agencies. During this stage it is important to be specific and think of as many potential buyer roles as possible, although you may not ultimately develop a persona for some of the roles deemed less important or low-value market segments. --- Second, consider the needs and situational triggers for the personas identified earlier. Knowing which issues are important to each segment represented by a persona not only tells the marketer how to market to the segment but also gives other operations groups like flight services information that helps to keep customers satisfied. --- The third and final step is to create messaging objectives, which are "purpose-oriented goals for your communications" with each of the personas defined earlier. In order to be effective, a social media marketer must tailor her or his message toward each group being addressed. Which of the identified issues will be most effective in persuading business travelers to fly JetBlue? In other words, once a social media marketer knows what information a buyer will need before making a purchase, it is possible to design a social media strategy that provides a buyer with the relevant information, making the individual more likely to buy the product.
Optimizing Posts and Post Timing
First, what do we mean by optimizing? Optimizing: SearchEngineLand (SEO) SEO stands for "search engine optimization." It is the process of getting traffic from the "free," "organic," "editorial" or "natural" search results on search engines. Second, how do we optimize social content? Every platform is different when it comes to optimization. (every platform has different days and times when it is best when people are most engaged) optimal days and times may differ from industry to industry. Brands need to investigate what is best for their industry and monitor results for their product to be assured of doing the best possible job of reaching their own target audience.
Targeting Available to Brand Posts
Google+ has a built-in targeting mechanism with its circles. The platform also makes available targeting by age and location to brand pages. In spite of Google's actions, search by hashtag has become a key feature on other platforms. Hashtags themselves have become an important source of analytics data as well as ideas for everyone from journalists to content marketers. In 2015it became possible to access the trends in real time. Hashtags are especially important in helping marketers to form communities of interest on visual platforms like Instagram24 and video platforms like short-video site Vine. Perhaps the most intriguing discovery and potential targeting item to come along recently has been the emoji. The phenomenon quickly became global, managed by the Unicode Consortium, which decides which emojis will be added to the lexicon and therefore to keyboards like iPhone's and Gmail's. Hashtags and emojis makes them searchable and therefore able to reach targeted audiences. While new developments like emojis are trending in terms of targeting, it is also important to look at a final example of platform support for targeting brand posts. As it has done in so many social media developments, Facebook is leading the way—a way that is likely to be followed by other platforms in the months and years to come.
The Targeting Process in SMM
Identifying and segmenting the target market is a key marketing activity. Usually the campaign is designed for a single market segment; not the entire target market with just one segment or one campaign.
Identifying Audiences for Personal Branding Efforts (LinkedIn)
Lesson #1. LinkedIn groups expressly forbid self-promotion. The platform describes self-promotion as follows: While the specific details of what's considered self-promotion depends on the group, topics such as webinars, books, blogs, motivational speaking events, software sales, and real estate can be considered self-promotion. Try to avoid words like buy, sell, or attend. Lesson #2. The LinkedIn Relationship tab provides information about how you are connected to another user, allows you to see the messages you have exchanged, and lets you make notes on the relationship and how you plan to further it. Lesson #3. Use the Tag feature on the Relationship tab to assign tags to connections. Lesson #4. You can categorize your contacts on LinkedIn but you cannot build a list that allows you to message all contacts in a category at the same time. There are two main take-aways from the discussion of LinkedIn. First, youcan make contacts, learn a great deal about them by studying their profiles and interacting with them in groups, and assign them to categories on LinkedIn. The platform, however, is very alert to spam and job seekers want to avoid being seen as spammers at all costs. Second, you should use the direct messaging feature for LinkedIn contacts with great care. Contacts can easily block you if they object to the nature of your message. Lesson #4. Consider using a tool to uncover profiles of relevant LinkedIn members. Lesson #5. LinkedIn may be the repository of much of your personal branding content, but you can develop communities on a variety of platforms and reach them with targeted content that will enhance your brand.
Big Data
Massive amount of data that is available from the digital clickstream and data from audio and video and video files. The amount of data that comes from all this activity defies traditional marketing analytics—regression-based predictive models, for example. Much of the data processing takes place "in the cloud," on large remote servers operated by IT services companies. Analytics services firms exist to support the model-building and analysis marketers require to make use of these sophisticated techniques.
Once the personas and associated messaging objectives are complete, the social media marketer is ready to compete the other elements of the media plan - Media Mix
Part of the SMM media plan is to schedule each post on each platform. Someone (or a tool) must follow the reaction to the posts, listening and perhaps replying to at least some of them. Formal evaluation must be done and reported to marketing executives.
Personas
Personas bring life to the bare bones of audience statistics and they are useful for everyone from web designers to copywriters to graphic artists.
