Demographics play an extremely important role in successful marketing efforts. If you are involved in the marketing of your own business or marketing is your primary job, you have probably done a lot of specific demographic targeting. Without understanding demographic marketing, you are unable to effectively reach the best target market for your product or service. Demographics should include the following factors when included in your overall marketing strategy.
Age demographics
Sure, you have probably been taught that it is illegal to make hiring or service decisions simply based on age. However, when you target specific age ranges for business purposes, this is not classified as ageism. It is simply a better way to understand your current customers and the age of customers that you are not yet reaching. In fact, you can even create entire social media campaigns based on age alone. Age can tell you a lot about your current business marketing plan. Are you missing out on Millennials? Maybe you need to focus your efforts more on the internet. Are you not converting baby boomers to your business? Primarily focusing on social media might not be the best marketing approach for this generation of buyers. If you have access to demographic reporting, utilize it to expand your target market.
Location
Location can also be extremely effective in digital marketing campaigns. You can utilize services like location intelligence software programs, geospatial data reporting services, and other demographic reporting tools to reach specific locations of customers. Location is especially beneficial when you want to expand your current businesses services or product reach. Many location intelligence software programs allow you to set specific city and mile ranges. Simply set a target point and then create a diameter location around that center range. The world?s population continues to grow. It is estimated to grow by 50% in the next four decades to more than 9 billion, from about 6.5 billion now. Marketing analytics based on location alone will become more important than ever.
Gender
Gender is another controversial topic. While you should avoid discriminating against specific genders in terms of employment or services offered, you can utilize gender to narrow down your marketing efforts. Some products and services are simply created to be used primarily by one gender. An example is that of beauty products. The beauty product industry is heavily composed of women. Creating marketing campaigns that do not specifically target women would be a mistake. You would waste a significant portion of your marketing budget on men, if you did not narrow them out first. Location intelligence software can also be helpful in using gender demographics. Women tend to spend more time at shopping or grocery locations than men do. Women tend to make most of the household shopping decisions. These facts directly affect the location of marketing efforts.
The expected growth of location intelligence software
When you compare our current marketing and location intelligence abilities to our abilities years ago, we have already grown substantially. We can only expect even more advanced of marketing and demographic programs in the future. This will create a growth of both marketing and location intelligence employees. Between 2012 and 2022, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics anticipates steady growth in jobs that require familiarity with GIS and location intelligence, including geographers (29%), cartographers and photogrammetrists (20%), and surveying and mapping technicians (14%).
Location intelligence has drastically changed the world of marketing. We can now directly identify who are current customers are and who we want to target better. A February 2014 global business survey by Dresner Advisory Services found that more than half of all respondents across all industries say location intelligence is critically or very important to their business planning.