The Importance of Knowing Your Customer Demographic
What are Customer Demographics? Customer demographics are a form of marketing research. They tell a business owner, in broad terms, who their customers are. Customer demographics are statistics describing the socio-economic characteristics of a company’s customer base. These characteristics often include customer gender, age, marital status, income, education level, location, nationality and occupation ...
Understanding Today's Internet Marketing Needs
Internet marketing refers to promoting products and services via the World Wide Web. This form of marketing has many of the advantages of traditional types of marketing, but there are also some drawbacks. Since Internet marketing is still relatively new, it is important for marketing specialists and executives to learn about each online marketing technique and use it effectively. A successful Internet marketing campaign requires marketing professionals to understand their target audience and use techniques that appeal to specific segments of the market. When used properly, these techniques can produce great returns.
Online Marketing Demographics
The Pew Internet & American Life Project collects statistics related to Internet usage among different age groups, genders, income levels, and educational levels. The demographic trends identified in these surveys are very valuable for Internet marketing professionals. The August 2011 survey revealed that 78 percent of all American adults use the Internet. Ninety-four percent of the adults in the 18 to 29 age group use the Internet, while only 41 percent of adults in the 65+ category use the Internet. This shows that online marketing may be more effective when used to target young adults than when it is used to promote products and services to older adults.
Online Marketing vs. Traditional Marketing
One of the major benefits of online marketing is that it can be much more widely available to people in different areas than some traditional marketing methods. Direct mail is an effective way to promote products and services, but it is very costly. In addition to the costs of printing the materials and paying someone to assemble them, some businesses need to purchase a commercial mailing permit. They also have to pay postage on each piece and on the reply card or envelope included in the mailing. This makes it very expensive to send out a direct mail piece that may not yield good results.
Online marketing also allows business owners to market to very specific segments of a market. Some of the most popular online marketing companies allow customers to target their campaigns to specific age groups, races, genders, income levels, and educational levels. Marketers can also target people with certain hobbies, such as scrapbooking or playing online games. Marketing to a very narrow group of people is one way to improve conversions and increase the return on investment for marketing activities.
Preparing for Online Marketing Campaigns
Before starting an online marketing campaign, a business owner should create a detailed marketing plan. The marketing plan allows executives and marketing specialists to identify their target markets and decide which strategies they will use to promote products and services. There are several types of online marketing ventures business owners can use. Content marketing involves creating and distributing information to prospective customers or clients. The idea behind this marketing tactic is to give prospects just enough information to make them want to sign up for a program or purchase a related product. E-mail marketing involves sending commercial messages to a group of people via electronic mail. This technique is not very effective for companies that do not have a lot of people on their mailing lists, but it can produce great returns for companies that have thousands of list members.
Search engine optimization is the use of a special set of techniques to make it easier for customers to find a website. The key to successful SEO is getting each page of a website to rank well for major keywords. The better a page ranks, the more likely it is that a prospect will find it. Online display advertising is similar to the traditional display advertising technique. With this marketing method, business owners promote their products and services by displaying banners or advertisements on other websites. These graphics drive visitors to the company’s website so that there is increased awareness of what the company offers. Affiliate marketing is a marketing method that rewards third parties for promoting the products and services of a business. When an affiliate makes a sale or generates a new lead, he or she receives a commission.
The Role of Social Media
Social media is an interesting online marketing method that is relatively new. It involves generating website traffic by promoting a company’s products and services on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. People use social media to interact with friends, family members, and acquaintances. Business owners can use this to their advantage by creating social media pages and offering visitors discount coupons, free product samples, or other incentives. Business owners should also take advantage of the nature of social media by providing excellent customer service. Someone might create a Facebook post about the excellent service given by a company representative, creating a free marketing opportunity for that company. If a company provides poor customer service, it is a good bet that the wronged customer will also pass that information along to his or her social media contacts.
Internet marketing allows small business owners to compete with large corporations without spending millions of dollars on marketing activities. Before starting an online marketing campaign, executives and marketing specialists should work together to define a target market and decide which marketing techniques they will use. Focusing on just one marketing technique is not advisable, as each technique has a different rate of success. Creating a varied marketing plan that includes social media, e-mail marketing, display advertising, and content marketing is the best way to use Internet marketing successfully.