What are Demographics?
Target market or target audience demographics is data related to a population or segment of users, visitors, customers, etc. Basically, demographics allow us to break up a large number of people and group them together based on certain characteristics.
Some of the common demographics seen in the business world are:
- Age
- Gender
- Income
- Education
- Family Life Cycle
- Economic Status
- Spending habits
- Interests
Target market/ target audience demographics is when a business uses these demographics to hone in on their target market. A business cannot target an entire population so they create these identifiers to determine who would most benefit from the business’s product or service.
Can I Have More Than One Target Market?
Yes, you can have multiple target markets. There are a few ways scenarios where you will see companies have multiple target markets. First, you might have different products that each have a different target audience and as a result different target marketing. Or you might make changes to your product in order for it to resonate with a secondary target audience. For example, only selling chocolate chip flavoured ice cream in North America. Or you might find a way to advertise your product (without making any changes) to that appeal to multiple target markets. In the end, you can have multiple target markets.
The Power of Targeting
Selecting clear targeted markets and audiences works like a magnifying glass that focuses a light beam. With a definite target audience all marketing details can be carefully tailored to appeal to potential customers’ interests, emotions, and worldviews. Targeting also enables marketers to take advantage of the massive dataset available in the digital age to get better results from digital marketing. If you create marketing campaigns with a message that resonates with your target audience then the success of a digital marketing strategy can increase tenfold.
How Can I Find Out If My Target Audience Is Actually Coming to My Site?
You might ask yourself who is visiting my site? Are the people coming to my site different or the same as my target markets? Well, Google Analytics allows us to track and group the different users that take in your content. Why is this important to set up and monitor? Well, if a business thinks their target market is 20-30 year old men, from the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) who are looking to buy dress shoes, can they back up their claim? How can the business actually know this demographic is coming and/or purchasing from their website?
Google Analytics helps determine if you are actually attracting your target market to your site. Evermore so, the data you find may lead you to reconsider your strategy and who your ideal target market is. Taking the previous example, if the business adds google analytics and sees that 35-40 year old men from Kitchener are visiting more than any other demographic group. They might switch their social media advertising strategy, targeting and perhaps even their platforms entirely.
It could also help you figure out why your current strategy or content isn’t attracting your target customers. Maybe it’s because younger men are no longer wearing dress shoes to work. Google Analytics helps you determine if what you’re doing is working and course-correct if necessary. Overall allowing you to effectively analyze your target markets.
4 Reports that Google Analytics Gives
Using Google Analytics can be overwhelming and figuring out which information matters to you and your business can be tricky.
There are 4 key reports that Google Analytics gives you to determine who is coming to your website and what their characteristics are and if they fit within your target market/target audience. Doing this breakdown is called market segmentation. It’s when you divide broad consumers into subgroups or market segments based on common characteristics.
All these reports can be found under “Audience”.
Overview
Overview, as its name suggests, is an overall picture of your audience’s data. A great report to look at if you’re just wanting to see a snapshot of your data. The picture below shows Tactyc’s overview from April 1 – May 4 2021.
You get a good picture of the amount of users who’ve been to your website in a specified time period. How many are new and returning users. What language is most used. The country they are coming from. What browser they are using. If they are using their desktop or their mobile device and more.
Demographic Segmentation
If you want to dig deeper than just the overview report then the demographics report is your next step. Google Analytics breaks down the visitors into age and gender in this section.
This is a great report for businesses who are more focused on a specific age or gender. For example retail businesses that sell mostly women’s clothing. This report will reinforce that women are the majority of people who are shopping on your website.
Or if your business can cater to anyone it might help you decide who you who your target audience should be when it comes to advertising on social media or any other platform.
Psychographic Segmentation
The psychographic segmentation report, known as the interest report tells you more about the interests of the website visitors.
There are three categories within this report. The first is the affinity category. This category tells you things such as, if users are sports fans, cooking enthusiasts, business professionals, movie lovers, etc. The second category is in-market segments. This category tells you the user’s product purchase interest. The last category is other. Anything that doesn’t fall within the two previously mentioned categories goes into this.
Geographic Segmentation
The geographic report tells you what language is most commonly used on your website as well as the geographic location of the users. Tactycs top two languages are English (Google Analytics separates Canadian and American) followed by German. The top three countries are Canada, the United States and Germany.
Who Is Engaging With My Social Media Content?
Another key platform that you should be looking at are your social media channels and your overall strategies in relation to each. This means Instagram, Facebook, Linkedin, Youtube, etc.
After all, you are putting out time-consuming content on these platforms so you should monitor who is looking and engaging with it. Who is commenting, liking, sharing, viewing, etc. Similar to google analytics, you want to make sure that the people engaging with your content match with the individuals you set out to target in your target market/target audience. If they are, great! If they aren’t, why is it and what part of your marketing efforts do you need to change?
4 Examples of Social Reports
This is the demographics report that Facebook gives. It gives data on gender, age and location.
This is the report that Instagram gives to business profiles. It gives data on age, gender, and most active time. It also provides information on location (not pictured).
This is the report that LinkedIn gives business pages. It provides data on mobile vs desktop, job function, location, seniority, industry and company size (the above picture is just job function)
How Often Should I Monitor My Target Market Demographics?
Now that you know where to look for your data you might ask yourself how often should I monitor my demographics? There is no one correct answer but the standard is anywhere from a monthly to a bi-monthly basis
Reviewing your demographic data on a consistent basis allows you to ensure your marketing efforts and marketing strategies are continuously reaching your target audience. Also it can help you determine if there are other target markets that you could be targeting.
However, if you’ve recently launched a new marketing campaign then you might want to monitor your demographics on a daily or weekly basis (depending on the resources spent).
It all depends on the activities your business is currently focusing on! If you’re not sure, start with closer monitoring and scale back as things look good.
What To Do With Demographic Data?
You understand what demographics are, you know where to find the data, how often to track it, now what?
The purpose behind this data is to be able to constantly ask yourself the following questions
1. How does this affect my marketing strategy?
This is your entire strategy. The combination of social media, pure advertising, direct communication, events, etc. How are they working together and what is the typical buyer funnel as it relates to it.
2. How does this affect my channels?
These are the specific channels. Honing in on the two or three social media platforms you are using.
3. How does this affect my content?
Even more in-depth, what type of content am I creating on each channel. Is it educational, inspirational, entertaining, etc. Is my target market engaging with the content or should I change it?
Want to learn more about how to generate a content strategy using the information you have? Learn more by reading this blog!
Scenarios
Let’s go through 3 different scenarios on how this might apply to you.
Scenario 1: I thought my target market was 45 year old males and above – based on my demographic data it was actually 25-30 and 50/50 split on genders.
In this case, this imaginary business has to reconsider their strategy, what channels they are on and the type of content they are putting out. They need to do an audit and evaluate their business, value proposition, target audience and content in order to find out why they aren’t attracting their original target audience. Depending on how this audit goes, they may need to dramatically alter the marketing material or even update their target audience to match the data; altering it from 45 year old males to 25-30 year old males and females.
Scenario 2: Google Analytics and Facebook are reporting the exact audience of 45 year old males but Twitter has 20 year old females as the predominant viewer.
In this scenario the imaginary business has one channel that isn’t attracting the target audience they would like. The business needs to ask themselves about the specific channel and the content they are putting on that channel. Is it different from the website and Facebook content? What specific group of people use Twitter vs Facebook? Once that is understood the business can change their content to target the correct people in their target market. Or they can consider the resources going into Twitter and make an educated decision on whether it’s worth keeping and add this group to their market segmentation.
Scenario 3: Demographics are showing that the 45 year old males are accounting for the most impressions but 30 year old females are the ones engaging.
In this final scenario, the imaginary business needs to reconsider the content to convert the 45 year old males from view to engagement. The business is on the correct channel and has the correct strategy but for one reason or another their content isn’t engaging their target consumers. There could be many different causes for this but a great place to look for understanding could be social media comments, shares, as well as your competitors and their content. From there the business can change their content direction, writing, formality vs. informality, and calls-to-action accordingly.
Analyzing your target market or target markets data is extremely important to ensure you’re reaching the right audience and providing the most value to your customers. If you still have questions about demographics and your target market contact us here at Tactycs where we build this consideration in from step 1 and continue to monitor via our software!