Thursday 7 March 2013

Digital Marketing: Understanding where your target audience is on-line


James Butcher, Group Sales Manager at Microsoft Media Networks shared his wisdom on digital marketing at an event hosted by the University of Sydney’s Master of Marketing program last week.

When James started working in on-line marketing 8 years back facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and Pinterest didn’t exist. Running on-line campaigns was a simple task of creating a presence on Google’s ‘Search’.

How things have changed
 
With the predicted shift of tablet devices becoming the primary household computer based device by 2015, James believes that on-line marketing will gain in importance as more people will be able to connect to the internet easier.

According to James, on-line marketing is now all about tapping into the passion points of your target audience so that you can better understand your customer’s internet comings and goings. The ultimate goal is to create advertising touch points for your product or service to parallel their on-line locations.

For example, if an Axe/ Lynx deodorant (Unilever product) digital marketing campaign was created for a target audience of males aged 25-30 years old, digital Marketers must understand what interests they are likely to have and what other media they are tracking on-line in the day. In the morning while eating breakfast, where are they reading the news? During lunch, are they check the footy scores on-line? In the late afternoon do they use the internet to quickly catch up on celebrity gossip? How much disposable income do they have, does this affect how much time they spend on-line? Are they city dwellers? Have they previously engaged with the brand?

There has been an enormous shift in on-line marketing recently. I’m keen to see what the digital marketing space will look like in 5 years’ time.

How has your company shifted its on-line presence in the past 3 years to adjust to more tech savvy customers?

Mina D'Souza
Current student in the Master of Marketing program at the University of Sydney Business School

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