Should your digital marketing agency use regional demographics?
Anyone involved in marketing can extol the virtues of digital marketing, and its many advantages over more traditional marketing methods. They are likely to mention factors such as:
- It can utilise any channel to reach your target audience where they will see it
- It can reach a larger audience more quickly
- It is shareable and has the potential to go viral
- It provides the opportunity for increased interaction and customer engagement
- It is an additional – and effective – mechanism for customer service and communication
- It enables instant connection with your target audience
- It provides measurable results
- It enables clearer attribution
- It is cost-effective
All of which lead to an overall better brand presence, which in turn can increase your rate of repeat customers and brand loyalty.
However, one factor that can sometimes be overlooked is the use of regional demographics in digital marketing. In fact, at first glance it can seem that some aspects of traditional marketing – such as posters, leaflets and local newspaper ads – can be more appropriate at targeting a local market than some digital marketing techniques.
But is this really the case?
In fact, digital marketing can be used much more powerfully than traditional marketing to work in different countries, regions or even specific demographics. It can be better than traditional marketing in that each campaign can be tailored to specifically appeal to your target audience. In this sense, it has the advantage over more traditional marketing, which by its very nature has to use a “one size fits all” approach, with more generic content and keywords.
So how can you use regional demographics effectively in a digital marketing campaign? Here are four steps to get you started:
- First of all, decide what it is that you are interested in? For example, is it age or gender or employment patterns. Who is it you are seeking to target and why?
- There are then various sources you can use to analyse the demographics of the region you are targeting. For example, the latest census results or Office for National Statistics.
- You can then analyse how effective your current marketing is to your target market in general by using a tool such as Google Analytics. Google can provide data on the age, gender and interests of visitors to your website. “Interests” data is taken from a combination of Gmail, app messages, internet browsing habits and YouTube videos watched.
- With this data you can see what is working well with your target market and can then begin to make your campaign more regionally based by:
- Creating landing pages geared to the region, using local place names and other relevant keywords.
Use region-specific stories about your brand; if possible interview regional influencers or have a guest regional blogger. - Extend your social media campaign to regional social media groups and interact with the members: this is an excellent way to get a barometer of issues and concerns on a regional basis.
- Finding regional partnerships with digital benefits. For example if you sponsor a local event this may then reap benefits in terms of social media mentions, tags and shares, website mentions and links, and email marketing mentions.
- Support a regional non-profit organisation: this will bring you onto the radar of their other supporters.
If you are not yet using regional demographics, we hope that the above steps will help you to get started on the journey. This is a topic we will return to again over the next few months, so do check back here soon for more insights on the world of digital marketing from Xcite Digital.