final project - creating a social media campaign strategy pitch for a brand of your choosing

Week 4: Identifying a Target Audience

Spring 2018 Social Media & the Brand NYU – Suzie McCarthy

Week 3 Learning Goals

By the end of today’s class you will:

- Know how to research a target audience - Be able to identify how brands use target audiences to inform their

social strategies

Really knowing your audience means you can communicate directly to them even if they’re in the middle of a crowd

Previously a tactic of brands in deeply competitive landscapes (like cars), in the age of social media, everyone wants to do niche marketing

- What do we mean by the term “Target Audience”? Class Question:

- Why is it important for a Brand to know their Target Audiences?

What Brand is this?

How knowing your target audience…. → Who BUYS my product? What influences their decisions?

Translates into a social strategy → What are their interests? What type of content would like like to see frome me? How do they use different social platforms?

There are 3 methods Brands use to identify & stay updated about their target audience:

1. Interest-based: Brands can listen to to see which demographics used key “interest” terms to stay ahead of their competitors and ensure that they are in-tune to changing demographics in their market.

2. Buyer Personas: Identity who the brand SHOULD be targeting based on who they need to purchase their product. You can then use tools like Facebook targeting to find or where these personas “live” on social.

3. Competitive/Brand audit: Find brands similar to yours who are doing social media well, look at the content they are posting and you can draw inferences about the audiences that they are targeting.

Interest-Based Ex: Game of Thrones Final Season → Start with events that you think will matter to your audience.

Buyer Personas Ex: Banking Customers → A bank wanted to decide if they should invest in a better digital experience or more physical stores.

→ So they broke down their customer base into these personas.

Brands use personas to help them think through the needs of their customers.

Buyer Personas Tool: Empathy Map

HOW YOUR PRODUCT HELPS

Competitive/Brand Audit: Ex- Gaming Consoles → All three brands want to attract gamers. The similarities and differences between them can tell you a lot about the general gamer community and how each brand approaches it.

Class Activity - Choose 3 posts that received the most “likes” from your

brand audit this past week. (3 different accounts) - Using what we’ve discussed today in class try to identify

the target audience for each post.