No matter what your business does, it can’t be everything to everyone. And consumers don’t want to be seen as “everyone” — for the most part, people readily categorize themselves in some way. “Book-lovers” or “sports fanatics” or “fashionistas” — these categories aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive, but you also probably don’t need to target each one of them with your marketing campaigns. That’s where demographic reporting comes in.
Demographics can include anything from age and gender to income, ethnicity, and hobbies. So how can you use demographic reporting to spend your marketing budget wisely? And how do you know which demographics matter to you?
You want to sell your product or service to the people most likely to buy it. That means if your company specializes in financial services, you might want to focus on baby boomers; and if your company makes a social app, you should probably target millennials.
This is the idea of the “ideal customer.” What traits and characteristics does the person most likely to purchase your product exhibit? The deeper you delve into the profile of this ideal customer, the more specific you can get with your marketing campaigns.
Intelligently targeting your marketing toward people who are more likely to buy your product isn’t just cost-effective; it can also allow you to create unique selling points based on the preferences and needs of your ideal customer. Lay out scenarios that that specific customer base can relate to, and let the storytelling work its magic.
There are plenty of marketing analytics services out there to provide your business with pertinent demographic reporting. Let’s talk about some types of demographics, and how each one can be important to your company’s success.
- Age. The age of your ideal customer can be incredibly telling of their interests, concerns, and lifestyle. The average ages of life insurance customers and tablet customers can be very different.
- Gender. Just like age, gender can clue you in to a number of valuable insights about your ideal customer. For better or worse, some categories of product are almost universally marketed to one gender or the other – makeup and sports, for instance, have pretty clear-cut gender demographics. But for many products, gender may not be the first demographic you think of. Consider laundry detergent: who buys laundry detergent? In a family with children, it’s more likely to be the mother than the father. So, a laundry detergent brand can target women to increase their sales.
- Ethnicity. Ethnicity can drive many purchase decisions. For instance, some ethnicities have a taste for certain spices in food, or may be more likely to want a phone plan with plenty of international talk time.
- Income. A consumer making minimum wage is never going to purchase a brand new Porsche, and a consumer in the upper middle class isn’t going to purchase instant ramen.
- Location. It’s not just for the real estate industry. Geospatial analysis can tell you where your ideal customer lives, works, and travels — or the reverse. If your business is looking to target a certain geographic area, geospatial technology can tell you all kinds of things about the demographics of that location. Learn all about the average income, home ownership rate, education level, employment status, family status, and more.
The geospatial industry has really taken off. At any given time, there are at least 24 active GPS satellites orbiting Earth. Each GPS satellite circles the globe once every 12 hours, traveling at around 7,000 miles per hour.
The geospatial industry made $73 billion in revenue in 2011, and helped to create $1.6 trillion in revenue for the United States economy as a whole. And a recent report from MarketsandMarkets estimates that the geospatial analytics market will expand from $27.42 billion in 2015 to a gigantic $72.21 billion by 2020.
And that growth is no surprise. In February 2014, Dresner Advisory Services conducted a global business survey, which found that over 50% of all respondents, across all industries, report that location intelligence is critically or very important to their company’s business planning.
As you can see, demographic reporting can and should play a major role in your marketing strategy.