Reaching Niche Audiences: Consumer Pull

Posted on | May 7, 2009 |

By Mary Lou Roberts

The numbers I quoted in part 1 of this series paint a fascinating picture of young mothers connected to one another by technology and common interests. We ended on the question, “How do marketers reach them?”

Reaching targeted audiences, on and off the web, becomes a more significant issue every day. Audiences continue to fragment, as do media.

The Mom Blogs

The marketer is faced with increasingly complex media decisions and questions of targeting and effectiveness.

In an interesting way it goes back to the traditional advertising concept of push versus pull. In this case, an end goal of promotions, especially on the web, might be to get consumers to pull content to them. How? Many portal sites encourage users to “make this your home page.” That assures many page views each day. These and other large sites offer personalization capabilities—a potent way of bonding with their users. If it’s not your portal, you can derive the same benefits from having relevant content on their menu. Many of the pages that offer personalization have predominately syndicated content.

At the other extreme, even the smallest sites and blogs can offer feeds via email and RSS. Desired content is delivered (yes, in technological terms it’s pushed to them) without the consumer having to take further action. In between there are other content distribution devices like widgets. Our editor, Penelope Stockinger wrote a post on widgets that included a quote from BrandWeek. It pointed out that the trick for successful widget campaigns is creating a widget that adds value to the user experience while building brand affinity. Relevance again! Earlier I had pointed out that widgets are so pervasive that they now have their own metrics and advertising network, so they are clearly a potent force in distributing content.

All these consumer pull techniques have the potential to put your brand before the consumer on a daily basis—perhaps many times!

The branding potential of this kind of pull marketing is great. However, it’s not a quick fix. This type of audience takes time and effort to develop. To reach carefully segmented audiences quickly with little wasted reach, today’s technique of choice is the vertical advertising network. Part 3 will look at that option.