There is a plethora of tools that digital marketers will use to understand more about their audience and to plan campaigns with. From free online tools like Google Trends and App Annie, to the detailed audience insight available through media buying platforms such as Adwords, Facebook, and DoubleClick, and of course Google Analytics and our proprietary ARMalytics suite of systems! That said, it is very important that digital practitioners not rely exclusively on ‘digital tools’ for digital insight.
We have recently undertaken a big research piece for one of our clients looking specifically at the online behaviours of their target audience. One key consideration was that we had to ensure we drew a distinction between the audience that was currently engaging with their digital properties and the online behaviours of the target audience.
Using more traditional insight tools like TGI (Target Group Index) and Connexity’s Hitwise, we were able to get a much deeper understanding of things like how our target audience used social media, how frequently they read blogs and their attitudes to researching and buying online. We were also able to overlay this with age to understand the differences in behaviours for younger and older audiences within our already tight target age range. Furthermore, new functionality within these platforms allowed us to really unpick the subtle differences in behaviours by gender, common themes in term of websites frequented and overlay this against our main competitors. By comparing these behaviours with our current customer profiles, we were better able to understand the opportunities with targeting, channel mix and messaging.
All Response Media Viewpoint
In our experience the ever-increasing capabilities of online insight tools and buying platforms can inadvertently result in the underutilisation of traditional media insight tools by digital specialists. It is important to remember that there will be a difference between the online behaviours of your current user base and the online behaviours of your target audience and the more you understand these differences the easier it becomes to identify new opportunities.
