01 Dec Understanding How Consumers Use Different Communication Channels

The exploding popularity of social media over the last two years has opened the doors to more frequent consumer interactions and brand sharing for companies. Along with that, it has also introduced new complexities to market targeting.

AdAge.com has recently published a great article listing several characteristics businesses should be looking for when searching for its ideal or best markets. Accompanying that is a list of characteristics companies need to be looking for in an operational sense. That is, how does your market utilize traditional media and social media? How can you merge these two channels in your strategy?

Several of the characteristics listed are more traditional than those dealing with word-of-mouth value via social networking and the brand advocates spreading it. The idea of word-of-mouth is by no means new but advertisers and marketers are having to reformulate their efforts due in part to the vast number of tools, frequency of use, and instantaneous nature of social networks. We still need consumers that are brand loyal, interested in new products, and aren’t price sensitive. The goal, according to the AdAge.com article, “Rather than look at each of these things separately, though, we’re suggesting marketers can and should bring together all of these proxies for profitability.”

The characteristics needed in searching for your best target market today are similar to the ones that were successful in the past. We must now understand and factor in the different ways brand advocates will play their role. This requires brands to research and understand how the best customers use traditional and new media in the different stages of the buying process. For real estate sales companies, how does your best consumer learn about neighborhoods, sustainability, and financing? Maybe they are willing to communicate and learn about a particular neighborhood on Facebook but not financing.

A strong understanding of what our best costumers do and how they behave on the differing communication channels will give use a better understanding of how to effectively communicate with them.