Taylor Swift, 2-Year-Olds, and Target Audiences
Finding and Using Your Audience for Better Content Sharing
My 2-year-old loves to sing and dance. She is constantly pulling on my hand to have impromptu dance parties in one form or another. And as a father, I love every minute of it. So imagine the disappointment when I flipped open my laptop, turned the volume up, opened Spotify to type in “Shake it Off” only to find it wasn’t there.
Here’s the thing, Taylor Swift thinks you should pay more money for her music. She thinks that she, as an artist, doesn’t get a big enough cut for her art. Now I’m not here to argue whether or not she’s right or wrong , but she does know one thing… you will pay more for her music.
If you told me one or two years ago that I would be trying to find Taylor Swift’s latest hits on Spotify, I genuinely wouldn’t have believed you. But here I am, contemplating whether or not to buy 1989 in the iTunes store because constantly replaying it on YouTube isn’t sustainable. I’m not going to lie, I really like it. I kind of don’t mind buying it. So, what happened? What Changed? Why do I feel like I am in urgent need of Swiftamine?
Even Taylor Swift Knows How to Reach Her Target Audience
The reality of the situation is that Taylor Swift is not merely some musical genius; she’s a marketing genius and she knows her audience very well. She knows what people are talking about and the keywords they use when they search for her name. She knows the stories that are trending about her and where people are finding this information out. She knows the general age and gender of her audience. She knows the style of music they like and what they will like next year. She knows the devices they’re playing that music on and, maybe most importantly, she knows what they’re willing to pay for it.
Taylor has an overall picture of both her audience and her buyer. Do you know how I know this? It’s every lyric to every new song coming out. Taylor Swift is custom making music that you will buy and then telling you where to buy it. She is also on every show that you watch to tell you her whole story herself. None of that is by accident.
Using What Taylor Taught Us To Our Benefit
Now, when you have a business there are two things you need to look at when wrapping your head around where to start your marketing campaign: your audience and your buyers. You need to get as much information as you can about them. Like age, interests, primary means of communication, social circles and lifestyle. All these things boil down to one thing… Analytics.
I know what you’re thinking: “But analytics are so boring. I don’t even know what I’m looking at half the time.”
Here’s the deal, you need analytics if you want to begin having real success with a campaign. Tony Palmer, President of global brands and innovation for Kiberly-Clark Corporation put it this way “the key is to use analytics to enable and enhance creativity.” With that being said, let’s dive into four tools that can help you to find who your target audience is and where you can find them.
Tools of the Trade: Finding an Audience
Google Analytics:
If you have a site up and running you need to have Google Analytics on it, period. This is where you want to start. Don’t be intimidated by this crucial marketing tool.
Google has their analytics up so that right out of the gate you have a pretty good snapshot of who your audience is and how they’re finding you. It tells you social streams they come from and the trends of what they like. Sure, you can drill down a lot deeper, but if it’s new to you, just check out the overviews and make some notes about what sticks out. You can go deeper from there.
Facebook Insights:
If you have a Facebook page, you’ll definitely want to use Facebook’s Insights. This will give you a great look at when your audience is active, different demographics of your audience and how successful the reach of your content. From this, you can adjust your strategy to better reach out to your social followers.
This allows you an exclusive look that can change how you market your business on social media sites and how you use them in general. Think of the number of people that use social networking sites like Facebook. By harnessing your audience on a platform as powerful as this, it can do a lot of good for your company.
FollowerWonk:
This is another great tool to gather information about your audiences off sight trends. FollowerWonk runs analytics on twitter to see what others are saying in regards to your market place.
FollowerWonk gives you the capability to run searches on people using specific key words in your market, giving further opportunities at customizing your target.
Buzzsumo:
This tool may be my current favorite. Once you have an overview on who your audience is and what they like, start researching on Buzzsumo. It allows you to see who else is talking about your topic of choice, where they’re sharing things to, and who is getting the most press about it.
Buzzsumo can also see the key influencers on specific topics. It’s a really simple but powerful tool for relevant information. Now you can see who has the most influence and who’s hand you need your content in.
While I’m pretty positive that Taylor Swift wasn’t using these tools, I am sure that you can use them to get some of the same results that she’s been benefitting from for not having any of her music on Spotify. Find your audience and what their likes and interests are and you can find a way to sell your product back to them by using what you now know.
By Scott Rehnberg, Relationship Marketing Manager
Scott Rehnberg is ProspectMX’s Relationship Marketing Manager and go-to guy for outreach. Scott has had years of relationship building and customer service experience with his work in various fields and industries. Scott brings fresh ideas and a keen eye when it comes to gathering the right resources, leads, and links for our clients. His driven attitude and passion for the marketing industry has already been changing and improving the way that we work, and he continues to successfully grow both our company and our client’s companies.