When implementing your marketing strategy, whom are you marketing towards? Do you know where they live? What they wear? Whether they prefer Coke or Pepsi? Such questions might seem like frivolous guesses, but they are actually the cornerstone of demographic marketing.
Every company has several target market demographics, meaning their business or service appeals to a certain consumer population. However, marketing towards that demographic involves more than just data like their age, race, and gender. At Summit Collaborations, we like to use something called “client personas.”
Client personas are an effective way to approach demographic marketing, but before we explain how to craft and use effective client personas, we want to make sure you understand the dos and don’ts of demographic marketing.
What is Demographic Marketing?
Demographics plus marketing. What more is there to say? Quite a lot, actually. Demography introduces a lot of science and research into the world of marketing, so the collection and use of demographic data requires a lot of expertise. In short, demographic marketing refers to any attempt at targeting your marketing materials to a specific audience.
The demographic data themselves can be both incredibly general and incredibly specific. A great example of this is Apple. Apple products, such as the iPhone and MacBook, are generally marketed towards a wealthier urban population. Within that population, though, Apple runs different marketing campaigns.
For example, some Apple advertisements are geared specifically towards artists and content creators, while others are geared towards urban professionals. You can go even further into their marketing tactics and look at how those ad campaigns are tailored to different cities. You would probably expect a more artistic marketing strategy in cities like Los Angeles, and a more professional marketing campaign in cities like Chicago.
At its most specific, you might even have different “personas” in each campaign. One ad in Los Angeles could target aspiring actors, while another could target video makers and producers, etc. From there, you could craft personas around these occupations: what the target customer likes to wear, what music they listen to, how they might use the Apple product, and other considerations.
This level of specificity helps create brand identity, which ensures that Apple’s customers are long-time purchasers of Apple products. The biggest brands tailor their marketing strategies towards these consumers, and with well-crafted client personas, your company can achieve the same.
Demographic Marketing: How Client Personas Help
A client persona represents the archetypical consumer that, ideally, will buy your product or service. When creating marketing materials, you are always speaking to the client persona, so having this archetype helps you direct the conversation and speak directly towards your intended audience.
A marketing persona includes both basic demographic data and a plan for speaking with that demographic. Your client persona should consider the following demographic factors:
- Age range
- Gender
- Race
- Profession
- Location (urban versus rural, west versus east coast, etc.)
- Income/socioeconomic status
- Unfulfilled needs
That last bullet point is the most important, as your business fulfills this need. Sometimes these needs are obvious—for example, a restaurant fulfills a hunger need. However, an unfulfilled need could also be something higher on Maslow’s Pyramid, such as a need for belonging and community.
When we craft our client personas, we try to give them names and backstories. It is much easier to craft marketing materials towards “Bridget, the nurse,” instead of towards a “middle aged midwestern health professional from an upper middle class background.”
Finally, we conclude each persona with information on what that target demographic sees in the marketplace. The persona should include suggestions for targeting the demographic in each stage of the buyer’s journey, from awareness to decision.
Using Client Personas to Target Market Demographics
You might have only one persona, or—and far more likely—you might have 3-6 personas. Regardless, every piece of marketing material you produce needs to keep at least one of these personas in mind.
For example, if you know your ideal client works in a professional setting or has a high-level degree, then your blog content should reflect that level of education. Thus, you know you should use higher-level vocabulary, avoid simplified adjectives like “good” and “great,” and eschew the use of passive voice sentences.
Or, if you know your clients are more artistic and visual, then you know you should focus your social media marketing towards image sharing sites like Instagram and Pinterest. A web presence dominated by artistic images and tastefully considered colors will win over these potential clientele.
Client personas are especially effective when running digital advertisements. For example, Google makes it possible to tailor Google Ads towards certain demographic groups. Social media sites even take this to the next level: Facebook lets you market towards people who like certain pages, and Snapchat lets you market towards people who watch certain stories.
This is why questions like “Coke or Pepsi?” are important. Large corporations like these have crafted brand identities among their most loyal customers, so if you know your client personas also like certain brands, you can fine tune your digital ad strategy towards them.
Closing Thoughts on Demographics in Marketing
However you write your demographic marketing strategy and client personas, make sure your branding appeals to your customers without pandering. Some brands try connecting with their client personas too fiercely, overusing the slang or vernacular of their target audience.
Treat your marketing like a conversation between the brand and its potential customers. That way, you encourage brand identity and community among your clientele, inserting yourself into your target demographics.
Want more insights on demographic marketing and fine-tuning your client personas? Summit Collaborations can help! Reach out today so we can learn about your company, and we’ll get to work on your demographic marketing strategy.