The amount of data available to marketers today can alleviate some of the pain associated with finding an immediate audience for new product launches. Digital consumers leave a trail of signals behind as they navigate the web, search for product information, consume content and make purchases. This data can be harnessed to help companies design, launch and promote new products more effectively. Here are five essential ways marketers can use data to launch new products.
Market Segmentation – Thanks to the predominance of television advertising over the past seven decades, most people think of target audiences based on demographics first,, But, another powerful way to begin segmentation is based on search behavior and website visitation. For example, if your company is planning to launch a new fitness tracker, it would be smart to identify people who searched for terms like “local gyms,” “healthy eating,” “workouts,” “fitness tracker,” “fitness tracking,” or visited the websites of health related companies and products or competitors such as Fitbit, Garmin or Polar. You can then use market research tools like AudienceView to better understand this segment’s demographics, online behavior, and attitudes. For example, you may discover that the people searching for fitness trackers are mostly males aged 25 – 34, and that they are likely to care more about value than about brand names—which means you may be able to capture a significant share of this in-market audience by offering a fitness band at a lower price.
Past Purchase Behavior – Another tactic for identifying potential buyers is to look at their past purchases and shopping data. This allows you to identify people who are already in the market for similar products, or have perhaps purchased complementary or relevant items. Using our fitness tracker example, you may want to find a group of people who have purchased running shoes or a smart scale, or have recently browsed other fitness bands or clicked on product pages (in this case, they have demonstrated a high intent to buy and should be targeted rather quickly).
Lifestyle Audiences – Another option for targeting a relevant audience for your product is to target pre-built audience segments based on lifestyles or interests. For example, you may choose to promote your new fitness tracker to a “Fitness Buff” segment — a collection of people who searched for fitness related products, consumed health content and/or have engaged with sports brands like Nike or Asics.
Audience Modeling – Once you identify the key audience segments you’d like to target, you will want to reach a lot more people just like them. Greater volume can be achieved through “look-alike modeling.” In a nutshell, look-alike modeling allows marketers to leverage a third party data source to target a greater volume of people who have similar attributes to their smaller, known audience. Your modeled audience can be plugged into a data management platform or used to purchase display media programmatically.
Tighten Up Your Messaging Based on Insights – Ideally, the insights you gained during your research can help drive more effective ad creative – headlines, copy and images to generate the best response. You may decide that certain messages work better during different phases of the buyer’s journey, or with different demographics. For example, you may identify both male and female audiences who have purchased sporting equipment and searched for fitness trackers, but also note that women are significantly more likely to search for “fitness tracker reviews” than men. In that case you may include a quote, testimonial or review from a happy customer in your ad creative for female segments.
By understanding how your potential audience thinks, behaves and buys, you can better understand what they truly care about when considering a new product.
Connexity is a digital consumer insights and activation platform designed to help marketers find, get and keep customers.
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