So far in this class, I have covered how digital technologies have disrupted the commercial media ecosystem and then the conventional mass communication approach to promotional marketing. I have also discussed how digital communication systems have impacted the goals and processes of marketing, and how individual consumers respond to persuasive messages from digital media. In this learning module, we will focus on how digital marketers can discover, target, and reach the right consumers in the digital world. As I discussed in an earlier lesson, when planning communication activities in the past, marketers relied heavily on predictions about who would be in the audience. In the era of traditional mass media, marketers knew in advance the specific time when a TV show would be aired, on which channel, or when a newspaper would be printed and delivered. They also knew from research who watched this show or read this newspaper. Based on this information, they could easily predict who was likely in the audience and then plan ahead what products to promote. In other words, by having control over where, when, and how a message was to be delivered. The marketer's job was to simply prepare the message based on a small set of characteristics shared by members of the audience group. In the digital era, media users are active and communication is mobile on multiple devices. An active audience chooses when, where, and how they consume information, instead of passively waiting for media content to be delivered. The digital media space is also vast. There are billions of websites, online videos, social media pages, and the prospective customer can appear at random on any of these spaces at any time. So how can we strategically and effectively place or deliver marketing messages? The answer requires a deeper understanding of media audiences behavior and the powerful technologies available to digital marketers today, we will begin with audience. Media and communication researchers have developed two major theories to understand why people use the media. The first called uses and gratification theory, is an approach to understanding why individual audience members actively seek out specific media to fulfill various social and psychological needs. Scholars grouped possible motivations for media use into five categories. Information and learning, entertainment, escaping from the stresses of daily life, fulfilling fantasies through identification with characters and situations portrayed in the media, and finally, enhancing social interactions. Developed in the 1970s the uses and gratification theory was adopted by communication scientists to understand how the audience's goal for using the media could mitigate, enhance, or alter the psychological effects of media messages, such as persuasion. A second theory, media system dependency theory, developed by Sandra Ball-Rokeach and Melvin DeFleur, goes beyond individual needs and behavior to understand the complex interrelations within a society, such as its social and political structure, it's media system, and the number and function of its media outlets, and the media systems audience. At the most basic level, media system dependency theory states that people rely on media systems in various social contexts to achieve various goals. The more a person depends on the media, the more important media will be in that person's life, and therefore, the increased and stronger effects the media system will have on that person. Both the uses and gratification theory and media system dependency theory, are more than theories about audience behavior and media effects in the marketing context. They also emphasize the strategic importance of understanding audience motivation and then the social contexts surrounding media use. If marketers can understand the primary goals and context of a consumer using a digital communication service or visiting a digital media platform, then they can better meet his or her needs. For example, research has shown, not surprisingly, that users use social media to fulfill their social and relational needs. They visit Facebook to connect with friends and family, and not to play games or read news, even though they can. As such, a piece of marketing information shared by an online friend will be far more effective than an ad on Facebook. Similarly, users visit a search engine to seek information. They understand that a top ranked search result is more relevant to the search goal than those lower down. Logically, users would deem a company or product at the top of the search results page most relevant to their information search goal. That is why search engine marketing is all about competing for that top search result. Don't worry if you're not familiar with social media marketing and search marketing yet. I'll discuss them in detail later in the lesson. The takeaway here is that digital marketers should avoid thinking about media users as passive recipients of media messages. Instead, marketers should target each consumer as a unique individual, instead of as a member of a group of audience, by considering their motivations for using the media. Now that you understand why it is important to target consumers individually, let's take a quick look at three general targeting strategies in digital marketings today. Behavioral targeting, search-based targeting, and look-alike targeting. In the digital world, every action performed by an individual can be recorded and tracked. Many websites use cookies, small pieces of data sent from a website and stored on the user's computer by the users web browser, while the user's browsing, to track that users online activities and browsing history. Each digital device also has a unique device ID that can be linked to the device owner's location and app use. Behavioral targeting is a marketing method that uses a web users browsing history and other consumer related online behavior to help create and deliver marketing messages that are relevant to that specific user's habits and interests. Behavioral targeting is mostly used in online advertising. The primary purpose of this technique is to deliver the most relevant ads to the targeted individuals based on their previous online behavior. In contrast to web browsing, search behavior is deliberate. Knowing what someone is searching for gives marketers an insight into this person's motivation and goals. In online communication. The keywords that people use to search for information are the most direct measure marketers have of their intention. A search-based consumer targeting strategy thus involves responding to a prospective customers needs based on his or her information search behavior. Although a search-based targeting strategy is most closely associated with search engines such as Google, it can be used in a broad range of marketing contexts, where purposeful information search is involved. These contexts include online shopping on e-commerce sites and mobile apps, and using online directory services and recommendation systems such as Yelp. Finally, look-alike targeting is a method that leverages a business' own data on their existing customers by using machine learning methods to find new people who have similar characteristics and activity on the digital media platform. Essentially, the marketer tells the operator of a media platform, such as Facebook or Quora, to look for an audience that is most similar to their high-value customers. Theoretically speaking, any digital platform that maintain comprehensive user profiles and personal data could offer look-alike services to marketers. However, this technique is most effective and powerful on platforms where there is a large group of users with detailed personal information and lots of user activities, such as social media platforms.
