Portions of this blog entry are taken out of a recent WSJ article by David Brooks article called “Demography is King”. His article was primarily about politics, although as I read it, it was clear to me that there are learnings to be taken from Demography and that apply just as well to getting your business noticed and tailoring your advertising at the group(s) that are most likely to consider purchasing your products.
The first point that David made was that. people have become much more segregated in the last several decades, by things such as wealth, particular activities, education levels and the types of magazines and books that we read, as well as the type of television shows that are watched. Fifty years ago 80 percent of American television viewers tuned into watch Milton Berle every Tuesday night. Doctors and lawyers lived on the same street as the truck-driver – their children played together. Only 7% of Americans had a college degree.
Demographic groups have begun to act more like tribes or cultures and the effects can be seen everywhere we look. Imagine that you go to attend a pro-wrestling event. What kind of products do you expect to be advertised there? What kind of beer do you expect to be served there? Budweiser would be a pretty good guess, maybe Coors. And there’s probably some Jack Daniels floating around also. The situation is very different if you go to a play or a musical – that’s a more formal event, where most men have on a jacket and maybe a tie and the beverages that are served are more likely to be wine or micro-brews. I’ll even bet the cars in the parking lots are very different from one activity to another. There are probably many more differences too – from education levels, to types of sports, to the neighborhoods that they live in, and the types of restaurants that they frequent. I’m not saying that this is a perfect split – it’s definitely not, but I think that it probably holds true for Pareto’s 80%, or somewhere in that range.
“But how does this help me with my marketing efforts”, you might be saying? Well, a knowledge of the demographics of your customers, and how those demographics spread out in your area, can be a big advantage when it’s time to allocate your advertising dollars – and maybe even your advertising medium, and the copy that goes into your advertising. For example, imagine that you’ve started a restaurant that serves mostly organic foods and vegetarian dishes. This type of restaurant might tend to interest kids primarily in the 20s, who prefer tie-dye and Gypsy dresses. They’re probably a bit ‘crunchy’, play Ultimate or Golf-Frisbee, or at least have friends that do. One medium might service this restaurant very well, while another medium should be used to get connected to work-at-home mother who spends most of her time in a monster SUV, shuttling her kids from soccer practice to baseball practice and then to country club to cool off and get a nice meal.
I realize that this is a pretty easy example, but there can be vast difference between different groups of people. However, there are ways to test your theories. Change-up your advertising periodically and always keep track of who’s biting and who’s not (you can do this by advertising in one neighborhood or through one newspaper for a certain period of time). If you hand out coupons you can put in a code so you’ll be able to track down exactly who used the coupon and what area of town they are from. It’s actually not too difficult to do – just start paying attention to the advertisements that you get and guess what kind of approach they might be using to market their business.
A key business driver is identifying your target customer and targeting them as precisely as possible (while keeping you mind open to the possibility that you may have missed a target, or identified one that isn’t that interested in your products).
Know Thy Customers,
Chris
