Indulge me for a second. Imagine a scenario in which you could understand more about your customers, where you would be privy to such insights as their age, interests and household income level, and where you could pair that information with sales data to build a profile of the ideal customer or prospect.
And if that isn't enough, you could even push your paid search advertisements more aggressively to where you know your ideal prospect is searching.
Sound cool? Sure, but this is probably still a few years away, right? Maybe not.
Short of using a crystal ball to conjure up the situation above, there's a better way: demographic targeting. I continue to be surprised by how little attention it has garnered from search marketers, especially since it affords them the opportunity to target more effectively and more efficiently.
The fact is that demographic targeting is a great new tool for marketers.
While there are numerous features that make demographic targeting an effective tool, it is important to note that it does vary a great deal across each of the major engines. MSN's offering is robust and includes a few of my favorites such as the ability to adjust ads so they appear higher in the results; the ability to craft and serve specifically targeted creatives that appeal to the particular wants and needs of a certain group of users while serving your normal creative to the rest of the users; the freedom to test multiple creatives; and the ability to separate tracking for regular campaigns and your demographically targeted campaigns.
While MSN leads the way with this type of targeting, Google offers a limited form of demographic targeting by allowing an advertiser to select the sites its ads appear on within the Google AdSense network. However, Google does not offer the ability to bid differently or present different messages to users based on their demographics. Currently, Yahoo! does not have a formal demographic targeting offering.
Giving it a whirl
Recently, my team tested the impact of demographic targeting with MSN using Microsoft's demographic profiling capabilities within adCenter. Fortunately, our client had a very good understanding of their ideal customer, both in terms of age and gender. This information proved advantageous because it allowed us to single out this group and treat them differently -- without the need to go on a calculated fishing expedition in order to determine our desired audience.
When MSN was able to determine that someone in our target group was searching on one of our keywords, we were able to increase our bids to display that ad at the top of the results. We were also able to try different types of ad creatives that would only be displayed to users with our specified demographics.
Overall, the results were quite impressive. By placing ourselves directly in front of our desired audience with a special message, we were able to improve our results and watch both our conversion rate and raw number of conversions increase during the test. In the end, the client was extremely pleased with the results and the lesson they gained.
Issues and things to avoid
While this test was highly successful, I'll be the first to admit that some issues still exist with demographic targeting. One of the fundamental problems that dissuades marketers from embracing it is the fact that many organizations do not have a clear picture of their ideal user. Granted, most have some idea, but generally speaking, there are definite aspects that necessitate a sizeable leap of faith. Until more marketers feel comfortable with their customer profiles, many will not move forward with demographic targeting.
Another issue that warrants attention is the actual quality of the demographic data. In essence, just how valid is it? My hypothesis is that many people have at least some inaccurate information on online profiles with Google, Yahoo and MSN that hurts a marketer's ability to be completely accurate with targeting.
To test my theory, I performed a survey -- admittedly unscientific -- of the people I work with. As I suspected, many of them maintain alternate aliases for various online activities, confirming my theory that improving the accuracy of online profiles will go a long way in boosting the effectiveness of demographic targeting.
If you have found that your customers are all over the scale in terms of gender, age and income, you could find that aggressively honing in on one demographic might negatively impact your campaigns. If you fall into this category, I recommend you proceed with caution. You might be better off trying a test where you isolate certain products or categories to their specific demographic group and then test from there in order to limit your risk.
Making the leap
To jump on the demographic targeting bandwagon, you first need to identify your target audience and a unique value proposition that best applies to it. Once you have these established, you're ready to begin. Overall, it's pretty simple to use the major engines' interfaces to boost your bids and provide alternate creatives -- then you're in the game. For starters, I recommend alternating your targeting one week on, then one week off, to ensure that you properly determine the impact of seasonality.
Overall, demographic targeting can be a highly effective tool for marketers to leverage. And while I think it's time to jump on the bandwagon, before you make the leap, consider testing. If you already know your target audience this is a no-brainer, but if you don't a have a solid understanding of your ideal users, develop a series of tests to hone-in on your audience. The information gleaned from such tests will not only improve campaign performance but will also guide your thinking in other areas of your marketing.
Brian Kaminski is managing director for iProspect's San Francisco office. Read full bio.
