As digital marketers, we always rethink the content we produce. We analyse whether the target audience would relate to it or find it dull and boring, or in some cases not comprehend the message at all. We teach amateur marketers how to ideate simplified content for a larger audience demography. But what if we told you this is precisely where we need to upgrade our marketing strategy? What if we told you that we have been underestimating our target audience?
No audience has a fixed ‘never changing’ culture. The rise in multi-device media consumption has led to audiences having more groups. In addition to this fragmentation, audiences also have more autonomy to when and where they consume what content. The reduced costs of mobile data and availability of Wi-Fi on trains, buses, cafes and public places has made content consumption a daily affair, which was once limited to watching television, radio, and newspapers.
The constant evolution of the audience’s lifestyle and the fluidity of behaviour is ignored by these smarty-pants (marketers) while creating engaging content. But all they have to do is ‘observe and experiment’ with original, witty content. And why? Cause your audience is mostly going to be millennials who are way smarter than you…think.
‘Can we simplify it for the audience?’
Today, clients have access to almost anything on the internet from product/company reviews to clinical research papers/studies. What marketers are ignoring is the positive/acceptable attitude of the customer/viewer when they read clinical research even if it’s not understandable to them as a non-scientist. For instance, when a customer reads about medicine or nutrition supplement, the accessibility to such clinical research information provides validation, security, and transparency. Providing more information can never be a bad idea. There will always be someone who needs to know more. Basically, your audience is smart, and even if the information is too complex, the basic idea about it can be assimilated by your smarter target audience.
‘But Will People Get it?’
At a digital marketing agency, a marketer first “idiot-proofs” the content and then posts it on social media to ensure that it’s relatable and liked by all their followers. So when it comes to experimenting with content, we as marketers questions ourselves, ‘will they get it?’. This old thinking has to stop if you want to enhance the quality of your original content. When we think out of the box, we also need to understand the demographic background of our target audience. In this way, the content we create can be both trendy and engaging.
Did you get this:
Q: Why couldn’t the marketer sell his baking equipment?
A: He had a leaky funnel 😉
‘Who’ll Read This?’
Guilty. Guilty. We as digital marketers are all guilty of questioning ourselves whether our audiences will have the time to read what we post or be able to access the information through social media usage. Something like “we can’t post on digital networking channels because our audience consists of attorneys within the age group 55 years and above.” We sometimes fail to analyse where our target audience would be active.
We undervalue our audience’s tech-savvy capabilities. We would only be able to target the right audience if we know our audience’s behaviour and of course be aware of the kind of content they like to engage with.