Activating Broader Audiences to Generate Increased ROI
What makes people choose to be in certain communities; choose to engage, or choose to activate or become buyers or consumers is in my opinion based on psychographic elements that are keys to growing audiences beyond the bucketed core demographic of say 18-34 year olds with a cross reference to a marketers product – say for example car buyers. Understanding target customers’ attitudes and behaviors towards social media platforms,and most importantly their relationships with and through those platforms is critical to achieving marketing success through social media. What you hope to achieve, how you get there and what strategy you use to build engagement and conversion goes way beyond how that community engages with a single technology or single social media channel.
Working with clients to help drive increased efficacy of their marketing programs, my company Speakery has actively been working on bottom-up information gathering, indexing and correlating that information to identify core and ancillary passions and or interest points – and the sentiment and perceptions about a company and its products or services. These are used to identify the communities, influencers and mavens that can ultimately drive audience opt-ins to greater levels for the experiences we create; that deliver programs that inform; and activities that drive engagement and lead to converted buyers, and to understand and engage where sentiment and reality differ. And to take action to deal with the situation.
I’m have always been more interested in the world of intrinsic or extrinsic motivation, psychology, elements of heuristics, psychographics and biases than I have been in demographics as the basis for marketing programs. People will give communities a look or a try if driven by discovery or recommendations from their crowd. However if their interests or passions are not addressed and no value is received, they move on – and quickly. Conversely, as outlined in the mere exposure theorem (and in my words/interpretation), familiarity via increased exposure to stimulae will increase affinity levels, deliver greater connections and therefore higher levels of engagement. The evolution of getting to “liking” a product or service is not just repeated exposures to the same message – we do end up with diminishing utility from these efforts. Done right however, the exposure can result in brand awareness, engagement and greater commitment/loyalty. Managing the number of touchpoints or exposures is not about repetitive views of the same message ad naseum. It has to be about varied connections that layer and entertain or you risk irritation, negativity and bad WoM.
Depending on people’s media consumption habits, the stimulus should be from diversified sources and in different forms or media. For many online consumers, the stimulus is driven by a process of discovery, by their trusted friends and or by the power of their community or crowd. This can be direct relationships or people they have never met except online. ultimately it is not dissimilarly to off line relationships that are built on honesty, trust and respect. And the choices that have historically been influenced by sources that have been perceived to be a trusted source, that sphere is widened by the available tools for discovery and the ever expanding communites we are invited to join.
While some people are best communicated with through the visual or written word, others have to hear it or physically feel it. In the compressed time horizon of the internet era that we live in with increasing choices, the short attention span with short sound byte connections makes repeated appropriate touchpoints critical for engaging an audience. Regardless of the medium, the core platform is and must be engaging and entertaining story telling. And knowing the core and extended interests of prospective audiences and their various communities and correlating them to the subject matter, product services and goals of a client, extends connections and enables multiple varied touchpoints. And that drives connections and ROI.
Saturating me with the same message in the same format or across different formats – just leaves me saturated.
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