Finding the Target Audience away from the Target Conversation

After our clients have spent the time listening for what customers are saying about them and their brands, the next question is how to find others who may be interested in their products or services… but maybe just do not know it yet.  As companies look to reach this additional set of customers, they will need to step outside of their comfort zone to identify influencers in channels and domains that do not seem obvious at first.  They may even have to think about groups that they can create that resonate with their target demographic.

Yesterday, the Pew Institute’s Pew Internet & American Life Project released a study yesterday called the Social Side of the Internet which focused on understanding the role of groups on the Internet.  The study notes that “80% of Internet users are active in groups [which] amounts to 62% of all Americans”.  Of the top types of groups that people are involved with online in a social media context, the first five are: consumer groups, sports groups, charitable organizations, professional associations and community groups.  Thinking about most of our clients, those types of groups may actually be a more viable way to reach customers for many organizations.

Procter & Gamble has often been used as a case study example for building community sites to give their target demographic a place to aggregate, learn, discuss, and be lightly exposed to some marketing.  Most recently, the company launched ManofTheHouse to reach a new marketing demographic consisting of family men by offering advice and taking in comments on date nights, tech products and fashion.  All of the ads are focused around P&G products, but the company neither pushes brands or hides the fact that the company is the creator of the site.  Having launched in June 2010, the site was already seeing over half a million users a month by December. 

In the Forrester book, Groundswell, another P&G example of BeingGirl.com (focused on teenage girls and addressing health issues that they might be facing) is analyzed.  The research in the book suggests that of the 2 million visitors per month the site saw in 2008, P&G would only need to convince 6,250 girls to use its products to break-even on the cost of running the site.  This coupled with the other non-direct financial results seems to indicate a real reason to think about building these communities.

With the data mining capabilities of today’s monitoring and analytics tools, there are methodical ways to understand what topics and ideas will resonate with future consumers.  Consider analyzing for influencers and domains who may not be talking about your product, but are talking to your customers.  As we noted yesterday, this is a bit harder to do, but the benefits can be well worth the effort.

community, monitoring, strategy