New Media and Targeted Audiences, This is a Test

Recently, I read a blog post that stated just because "everyone's going online," it does not mean that "everyone is going online…exclusively."

That got me thinking about the subject of media choices and information overload. Where does one begin to understand what media and what offers or messaging will resonate with a target audience? You begin by understanding the distinct segments you market to, or want to reach out to. With that said, you have to understand behavioral characteristics of each group, including channel preference and buying patterns and habits. Then, of course, comes testing of offers and messaging.

With the economy tightening and marketers desperately seeking to reduce both acquisition and customer communication costs, many firms are blindly jumping into e-mail, blogs and social media without taking into consideration purchase behavior data or what the consequences of abandoning current practices will be.

Most experts define Baby Boomers as folks born 1946-1964, Gen Xers as those born 1965-1979 and Generation Y as those born 1980-1994. Understanding the preferences of each is vital to your marketing success.

While e-mail is an excellent customer retention tool, getting it to work efficiently for prospecting is more challenging than people think, regardless of generation. Conversational marketing with blogs, social outlets like MySpace and Facebook, mobile marketing and word-of-mouth are indeed wonderful tools, depending on who your target audience is and how they respond.

While most studies neatly package media preference with generation, the correct approach is to thoroughly analyze your customer and prospect data and then make intelligent marketing decisions, based on sound testing principles, to ensure your ROI increases.

For example, I recently ordered some gourmet food online. The items I purchased would be used at a special occasion and would constitute a real treat. At best, I would order from the company every three months. Yet, they did not take the time to understand my preferences and decided it would be a great idea to e-mail me their offers not once, but twice each week. The result? I opted out.

Truly great marketers know that it's about quality, not quantity of customers and that in today's uber-communicated environment, it is best to allow the customer or prospect to define the engagement terms, not the marketer.

As the number of media options increase, multi-channel marketing and testing will play an ever increasing role in marketing circles. Yes, we all know this. Yet, most marketers still don't test consistently. But they do complain their marketing is not working.

It's imperative to invest in your communication efforts up-front. That includes beginning with a thorough plan that incorporates what to test and what actions will follow the analysis.

A few good examples include Amazon.com, Lands' End and Dell. These folks test both online and offline and apply what they learn to help them market smarter and increase ROI.

Yes, testing does take effort, but it's better than the alternative: going out of business.

Grant Johnson is president of Johnson Direct.

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