Finding the Right Target Audience for your Marketing Campaign

The Knowledge

When first brainstorming for a marketing campaign, we tend to run on gut instinct and our past experience as to who the intended target customer is. According to Marketscan’s Marketing Campaign Survey, 65% of those surveyed use accumulated market knowledge to work out who to target with their campaigns. But that knowledge can only get you so far – and a more analytical approach is required to unlock the true potential of your database-powered campaigns.

No Pain, No Gain

Think surgical strike, not a blunderbuss.

Use data profiling to identify key personas and ask yourself:

Are there commonalities in your database relating to your campaign that can be exploited?

Perhaps a pain shared by certain sized companies?

Differing departments that share the same issues?

Typical customer characteristics that echo your campaign's message?

Or specific geographical regions or types that reflect your planned mail-out's theme?

Data profiling can uncover leads and avenues for your campaign that you may not have considered before. Let hard data inform your decisions.

A Thru B

If intending to deploy your campaign via email, use the ultimate in data profiling tools – A/B split testing – before the big rollout to ensure it will hit its intended mark:

Create small sample groups from your overall client list.

Use each group to test response rates:

From the persona point of view – a particular type of client versus another type to see who delivers the highest rate...

… to the pragmatic – one sample group receives your email in the morning while the other receives it towards the end of the business day. Which time delivered the highest click-through rates? Through A/B testing, you can draw up a targeted strategy that your final campaign can exploit to hit home its message.

Third Party Therapy

According to Marketscan's Marketing Campaign Survey, over 84% of businesses use both existing and new data to flesh out their databases. But where is the best place to source new data? The benefits of bringing a third party data provider are far-reaching. They will:

1. Examine your existing customers and campaign, and spot new angles that you may have missed – remember, it's a reputable provider's job to analyse customer records from across all industries on a daily basis.

2. Cross reference your records with their own database, pulling in new and relevant leads for your intended campaign.

3. Offer a data cleansing service to boost your data quality, ensuring that your records are legally compliant and up to date.

4. Offer specific data packages tailored for A/B testing.

Remember:

Your database is the core of your business.

Use it to identify the customers whose pains most tally with your intended campaign.

Use A/B testing on a cross section of your intended market to test if the campaign's message is hitting home.

Use a third party provider to help expand your customer records and aid in profiling.

However, all of this is just one element of a marketing campaign! Ensuring your marketing campaign is highly targeted can be a challenge, but the guide ‘Conquer your Marketing Campaign Challenges’ has all the information you need to combat those highly impactful hurdles.