The importance of defining target audiences, a necessity for ultra-competitive market sectors.

The health and beauty market represents a very competitive arena, the perfect storm of large volumes of advertising dollars chasing, at face value, very similar audiences with very similar messages.

There are two good rationales for defining target audiences when competing in noisy markets, such as health and beauty.

The first relates to getting value from any given budget, determining media channel selection and the price to be paid for implementation against respective channels. If you can point the pound notes at the audience most likely to be your consumers, long and short term, this represents efficient use of resource. How you define your market can lead to even greater budget efficiencies. Always move beyond demographics, but be aware of diminishing returns from definitions that are too granular and prevent the benefit of brand awareness across a broader audience.

Options for going beyond demographics include lifestyle and attitudinal data, and of course metrics derived from advanced digital traffic attribution, which should be in place for audience profiling and further segmentation opportunity. The media repertoire of the contemporary consumer requires an omni-channel approach. See our EllaOne case history to see how target definition leads to a channel selection designed to deliver effective brand messaging and pull consumers through the consideration phase towards conversion.

The second reason for defining audiences relates to message resonance. How you say something is just as important as where you say, and what you say. This influences media format selection, and allows good media planning skill to enhance creative work. Here, collaboration between the creative and media is essential. The media has to work harder to ensure optimum message performance. Good media planners understand the relationship between media formats and audiences in terms of reception and ability to deliver brand objectives. They can apply due diligence through familiarity with messaging and relevant channel and format options. Do your media and creative teams collaborate? See our UltraDEX case history which demonstrates how audience knowledge delivered a brand narrative for oral care away from the usual, and increased market share with low budget availability.