By Susan Baier, Head Honcho at Audience Audit

Today’s digital tactics such as search engine optimization, email marketing and social media allow marketers to finely tune what they’re saying to whom and drive consumer’s expectations of relevance to new heights. The fact is, if you’re not relevant to the prospects and customers you need to reach, you’ll find your emails in the “Junk” folder, your bounce rate climbing, your fan and follower lists stagnant, and your revenue growth stalled.

The champions of hyper-targeted relevance are often the digital agencies – those who bear the responsibility of helping their clients achieve success in the mysterious and magical world of online marketing. But often clients and their agencies don’t have even the most fundamental data about what motivates their key audiences.

Enter the beloved “educated guess.” Lacking hard data, agencies brainstorm, concept, ponder, cross-functionally collaborate, and eventually propose strategies and develop personas based on their best guess or even what their clients think their customers look like. The results are impressive, compelling – and often lacking in any real information about what’s driving a brand’s consumers.

Segmentation – A Brief Overview

Attitudinal segmentation research identifies WHY people make the buying decisions they do. This information — and ONLY this – is used to identify the key audiences of the brand and define the differences between them. Once audiences have been defined by what motivates them, other information can be included to flesh out a more complete audience profile – demographics, usage behavior, and even the competitive set each audience associates with the brand.

The impact to digital agencies of having this type of quantitative, statistically reliable information can’t be understated. It literally informs every aspect of an agency’s work to drive improved results for clients and a much more streamlined process for the agency.

Strategy Development

Imagine the impact of KNOWING who your client’s best prospects are, what motivates them, how the client’s product or service fulfills their needs and who each audience sees as your key competitors. No more guessing about audiences and brainstorming personas. Strategy and planning can now be based on who’s really buying and why, which audiences the client can most effectively convert, and the type of information that is most likely to drive their purchase decisions.

Segmentation research also reveals the brand’s current messages that each audience finds most compelling, identifies any that are irrelevant or even negative to each group, and provides a road-map for establishing overarching brand messages that will influence all audiences and can be used for umbrella marketing initiatives.

Content and Search Engine Optimization

Understanding how your target audiences use your client’s product, and what need they are seeking to fulfill by using it, is SEO gold. It allows you to explore search terms that you may not have considered – “decorating with candles” vs. “fragranced candles” vs. “candle gifts”, for example. And by identifying the competitors each audience considers your biggest threat, this research allows you to sharpen your competitive pencil when conducting site audits or highlighting your clients’ features and benefits vs. those of other products.

Website Strategy

An effective website helps targeted visitors find the content they need quickly and easily, driving conversion. The more an agency understands about what information a visitor is seeking, the easier it is to structure a website that accomplishes your goals.

User motivation data allows agencies to design sites that are organized by need, rather than organized around the products or services an organization offers. This type of content speaks directly to the visitor’s motivation for seeking information on the site, and allows the site to present it without the extraneous information an audience member will find irrelevant.

Pay-Per-Click Advertising

As Chris Sietsema from Teach To Fish Digital points out in his post about maximizing PPC ROI, pay-per-click advertising works best when highly targeted and relevant terms are used instead of broad but highly competitive ones. Segmentation research can provide insight into likely relevant terms for key audiences, minimizing the risk in ineffective tests and shortening the time-line to PPC profitability.

Email Marketing

In email marketing, relevance gets results. But knowing HOW to segment your email messaging – which products, messages, promotions and content will be most likely to draw the elusive click-through – can be a challenge. Once your segments have been identified through audience research, you can easily craft a short questionnaire that will do a nice job of identifying the segment of anyone registering for your email newsletter or product updates. Then every marketing initiative can be supported by a strategic plan for getting the right information to the most appropriate prospects and customers.

Social Media

Jay Baer of Convince & Convert has a wonderful post this week about the importance of using attitudinal segmentation in social media. Some companies, such as ThinkGeek, are pushing the boundaries of social media by crafting different SM feeds based on interest and motivation – a rarity now, but an effort I agree with Jay will become more common among truly connected marketers in the future. Having confidence that you’re hitting the right notes with each audience in their preferred social media venues means the difference between brand truly cultivating a devoted fan base and one sending tweets into the void.

…Etc., Etc.

The possibilities are almost literally endless. Digital agencies – and their clients – have so much to gain from knowing not only the “who”, but the “why” of brand loyalty. And taking off the blindfold ensures a much better chance at hitting the bullseye.

As owner of Audience Audit, Susan Baier provides strategic marketing advice and audience research to help organizations understand their customers better. Susan has worked for over 20 years in marketing and strategic business development with Fortune 100 firms and small companies. As an independent consultant, she works with small businesses, large organizations and agencies who want to identify their customers’ real motivations and market to them more effectively.