Knowing your audience better is key to a successful digital campaign

Brands are built around their audiences’ needs and wants. That’s why it’s important to understand who the audience are. It’s what drives effective marketing strategies, increases brand equity and connects audiences with brands. 

1. Research and research your target audience in advance
Never skip this process—this is the most important step for a great digital campaign. Make sure the demographics you’ve identified are the right and relevant ones for your brand or product. Working with the right media specialist can help you to streamline this process more effectively and accurately.

2. Look at your competitors
Think of this as part of your research. By evaluating what your direct competitors are doing, their strategies (whether they are effective), their brand voice, the different messaging and exact phrasing they use, the types of images (static and animated), you’ll be able to start picking out what works and what doesn’t.

3. Create a customer persona
The customer persona is a tried-and-true tactic used by many brands to better identify and conceptualise their target audience.

How it works: visualise a fictional character with information such as income, education level, family, interests, career and maybe even details such as personality traits. Walk in this character shoes and think about his/her wants and needs and how your brand or business can better his/her life.

4. Monitor reader comments and engagements
This is especially important if you’re running a content marketing or social media strategy. Pay attention to what your audience are saying about your campaign or activation and how they are responding to it.

The more engagements (in the form of likes, shares, comments and participation), the better your campaign fares. With these active engagements, you can fine-tune your messaging or content as your campaign continues to rollout.

5. Social listening
When possible, ‘plug in’ to ongoing social conversations, contextual topics and engagements your target audience has with other brands in the same category as yours. This may give you the chance to open up new trending topics and angles for your next digital campaign, helping you to stay relevant with your audience.