Demographic Profiling

[wenwilder]

I would love to see a company have a TRUE demographic profile done for their website.

I'm not talking about one of these - "I guess my target audience is......" or "I'm shooting for the age range of......."

I'm talking about having an honest to goodness REAL demographic profile!!!

Is this a hard concept to grasp? It takes one day - sometimes more - to put together a real demographic profile. One day! This simple profile can make a HUGE difference when it comes to marketing.

I love people who tell me that their target audience is "everyone". They open themselves up to my tyraid of questions. For example: If their target market is everyone, then they had better be darnnnnn good! I have yet to see an infant with a credit card! Or the family pet buying multi-vitamin supplements while browsing Petsmart.com. Or maybe they're targeting the spider in the corner of my kitchen - who knows he may be looking for a minature Monet to hang in his web, or maybe that's the recently deceased who'd like to jazz up their grave. Ya never know - could happen. Doubt it... but..............?

Then.... they change thier mind and say "Every person online". That's another one of my favorites. So now their tarket market is the person who doesn't speak english and can't read, who only surfs the internet looking for porn. Good target! Or maybe it is the elderly gentleman who has only recently received a computer from his grand-daughter. But, he only visits websites his grand-daughter send him the links to, because he doesn't yet know how to search the internet.

People really do not like it when I start asking questions. They also don't like it when I just say "interesting". But that's another story

I feel better now that I've ranted, but this will continue to be one of my biggest, most frustrating peeves. Such a valuable, and inexpensive process. Yet, people don't even consider it when they are designing a website.

There is no such thing as a site designed for "Everyone!"

[Dcrux]

Put some of the data points together and there might be a hypothesis.

All this analysis smacks of science. It runs contrary to the magical thinking underlying the behaviors we talk about here. The individual peeves are merely data points. Connecting the dots reveals the elephant in the living room.

To some, the web is not a medium. It is not something new which requires methodology, patience, or testing. Researching the competition is absurd only to a fairly narrow range of possible points of view. These only make some sense where the web is magic. To this point of view web design isn't business nearly as much as it is a magical ritual. Something to fend off the discomfort brought on by modern times. Computers aren't machines as much as they are magic boxes.

Web sites are not for outsiders like users and customers. They only serve as an acceptable excuse.

[eightfifteen]

The problem that we run in to is that people simply don't want to spend the money for anyhing that they call "frills." Often times this includes anything above and beyond the simple building of the site, including SEO.

When we send itemized estimates, we always include optimizing the site for search engines, but that is ALWAYS the first thing to be crossed off the list by the customer. So if a customer won't even pay for SEO, how can you expect them to pay for market research?

I'm not saying that you are wrong, far from it. I think you hit the nail right on the head, but for small companies like we work with, that are barely able to afford our basic design services, even suggesting that they need market research might make them choose another design company.

Another thing that we have found is that suggesting market research or SEO sends a flag up in our customer's mind that we are trying to take them for a ride. Many customers are so uneducated about they way the internet really works, that they don't understand that they are competing with billions of other sites. What is going the potential customer visit their site, and not Wally's World of Fun Facts? The answer in their mind is 1) their product 2) Our design. No matter how we try to convince them otherwise, all they see are the dollar signs.

Just my two cents.

[Stevo]

Man, I could not possibly agree more... and yet the problem seems to stretch in every direction. What gets me is the complete lack of understanding of the field of marketing in general on the part of management - when marketing is the very one thing that distinguishes the successful from the mediocre, or worse, the bankrupt! Even with product targeting (and therefore site targeting) they have no idea who they are aiming at... Still, its marketing - its not always an easy point to convey - especially when they are the manager, and you are 'just a designer'!! <sigh />

Well, what can you do - i dont see it changing short of a mass management re-education program!

Steve

[Dcrux]

This is so reminiscent of what Zeldman faced with this strange idea called "standards"...

Since the web standards movement began, people have been saying W3C specs were irrelevant, everybody uses Netscape 4 Internet Explorer 4 5 6, the browsers won’t change, the browsers haven’t changed, okay the browsers have changed I stand corrected but do you realize how much money we make from knowing the 17 proprietary ways to code a web page, you people are fools, you people are bullies, you people are Nazis, validation doesn’t matter, there are no benefits, my client won’t let me, nobody cares, users don’t view source, everybody has high-bandwidth connections, everybody has Flash, blind people don’t buy my client’s product, if they didn’t want us using tables for layout they shouldn’t have uh, okay never mind that one, CSS doesn’t work, XHTML doesn’t work, IE handles XHTML the wrong way and therefore there’s no point in using XHTML, there’s no point in using CSS until all browsers support CSS3, there’s no point in using CSS if you have to compensate for potholes in IE’s support, and so on.

The whole piece is striking in similarity, especially "the client won't let me" part. It is just possible we face the same sort of progress curve here. And yes, even the standards camp has progress to make.

The first tentative pushes were resisted. Better "pitches" were developed. Experiments were tried, and things did change.

Unless I am mistaken, the forum explicitly talks about peeves and their solution.

[southplatte]

Great topic!

Having just finished school, one thing I found is the small business management class I took actually focused a bit on this subject.

Several of the exercises we did focused on demograhpic profiling for online businesses (but could be applied to any online venture), mixing it with offline demographic profiling and implementation of it.

The problem is, 90% of small business could care less about a target market, demographics of in-store customers, let alone online visitors. This is evident when you find out that a large percentage of small businesses in the U.S. are gauranteed to fail within the first 3 years. Coincidence?

Websites really need to be targeted IMHO to be able to survive for very long. Whenever I start a new design project, that is part I work through with my clients. Who is your site for? What market? What Age? What sex? The goals of the site are?? And I attempt to pinpoint a little bit to better help during the design phase. I do this in the first few meetings with the client and attempt to do the best I can according to what they will work with me on.

The problem I see happening all the time is a business will pay for a site, not pay for any SEO, not define a target market, not do any demographic profiling to get anywhere and fail. Then, when they fail, they blame the web designer for making a bad site. To me, it is part web designer part client fault. As a designer I think I have the responsibility to try and make the client understand the importance of this step in the beginning, and explain what happens if it is overlooked. Then, if they opt out, it's not on my shoulders. Many designers just blow past this part, make the site to what the customer wants and forgets about it. The customer did get what they want, but it doesn't work for them in any way shape or form. The problem there is, you have to educate your customers on this. You then have to sell them on it. Then implement it.

[Dcrux]

Hmmm. Maybe it isn't enough to have a line item "SEO," begging to be crossed off. It may be time to learn about explaining SEO to clients, and the same goes for targeting using profiles.

[Stevo]

That makes a lot of sense - integrate the SEO into the total cost and give management a cloudy picture of what they are paying for (I know it sounds sarcastic, but i really mean it - in a lot of ways its an age old management technique that they in all likelihood use themselves). The problem is, on competitive terms, SEO can only do so much, and then when it comes to small business management paying for any advertising or sponsored links, you may as well be asking for blood.

[wenwilder]

They are finding that demographic profiling is more important than they thought. Along with behavioral marketing a sites selling potential becomes 3 times as potent.

Providing your target market with exactly what THEY want..... isn't that what business is really about?

[Dcrux]

This is almost off topic, but not quite. Profiling is crucial for writing a benefit statement. Couldn't a natural symptom of this be an inability to tranlate features into benefits?

Companies take features, or worse yet lists of technologies, mislabeling them as benefits. This happens nearly 100% of the time -- even with marketing sites. Technologies or popular buzz phrases exist completely removed from customer experiences and behaviors. Benefits are directly dependent on familiarity with customers. In fact, benefits could differ among segments. So the wrong benefit statement would instantly betray a lack of understanding.

[Stevo]

Again, this all comes back to appropriate segmentation though, doesn't it! If you have segmented your market correctly, then you should have a good understanding of which benefits affect which your targeted clientele - as DC said. The problem is that more often than not, such benefits cant be compiled from and applied to geographic criteria, but rather rely on more specific marketing criteria.

I take my situation as a case in point: I work for a company that makes help desk software. Now, this is not something that really should appeal to a particular geographic market (if they speak english, then one nationality should not differ from another in this respect - they have the same business needs) - rather it needs to be segmented based on something else - such as business needs, and the benefits the technology can bring to a business of that size - as opposed to the benefits the technology can bring to someone in France! I could be way off track here too - please feel free to correct me.

Steve

[southplatte]

Steve,

In that case, the technology would be the same in English, French, German or whatever geographic/regional locale. So I agree, what does the technology do for this type of business, or this size of business may be a bit more relevant.

Any given market needs to be segmented based upon the needs of the business. For some, this is purely demograhical or geographical, for others it is needs based, problem based or business goal based.

I think the main point would be that too many businesses do not do any of this for their web sites, and wonder why the sites fail to bring in additional revenues. And keep in mind, the web site demographics still are present, even in your situation. You would need to get your site in front of decision makers in the businesses that you are targeting.

[ChrisRC]

I'm talking about having an honest to goodness REAL demographic profile!!! ... It takes one day - sometimes more - to put together a real demographic profile. One day! This simple profile can make a HUGE difference when it comes to marketing.

I'm curious how you would assemble a demographic profile in one day that is something other than a series of WAGs. Any suggestions you have would be welcome.

I do agree that it's astounding how few clients are willing to focus thier efforts on a specific market. Once a company does that though, it can be tough to get usable information on thier potential clients. Examples from my full time gig based mostly on a combination of surveys of existing customers (the primary audience of the main website) and field rep analysis:

The vast majority of decision makers are men. Except at the largest and most important companies.

The vast majority of "decision makers" are between 35-50. The vast majority of actual decision makers tend to be either in their 20s or 60+.

[wenwilder]

WAG's? I have never seen that acronym before.

And yes, the vast majority of decision makers (in the corporate world) are men between the ages of 35-50. Unfortunately they are not the ones businesses have to 'sell' to 98% of the time.

Women make most of the purchasing decisions. Age range depends on the product or service.

Income, location, maritial status, and mutiple other factors are taken into consideration when a demographic profile is done. If you have done enough of them you can pull from previous resources, which makes preparing a demographic profile easier. ;)

[ChrisRC]

Sorry, WAGs = Wild Ass Guess(es)

My point on the decision makers my employer deals with is: the owner/store manager is typically a 35-50 year old male. This is the person everyone at the company tells you will make the decision and is quite often the one who signs the check.

In fact, the person you need to convince is frequently the 20 year old guy on the floor or the 80-year-old retired father of the owner.

Also, we found that our largest, most profitable customers have women in decision making positions far more often than our less profitable customers.

Yes, you can pull from previous resources, but on some level it is then no longer a true demographic profile of that specific companies audience. More often than not, you'll be pretty close, but you could be missing some very important data that you just can't get without direct study. Of course, the relavence of this all depends on just how specific the audience is.

[Stevo]

Well, the size of the business will become one huge piece of demographic information for a B2B type transaction. You may be able to work this out from explicit data from your existing clients, but otherwise it can be gathered implicitly. It again comes down to who makes the decisions, and how willingly they will part with their money. This will at least give you an idea of the ownwership structure of the business - the less inclined they are to part with the money, the more likely it is run by the owners (look at how hard the sales process was - im talking about significant items like a big piece of software, or web project, etc). On the other hand, sales to some larger companies can be gimmes cause for starters its not their money, for seconds, they have a budget that if not used will shrink next year, and thirdly, it can be capitally expensed so it doesnt look so bad on their profits.

I guess the point im trying to make here is that this is a different kind of demographic profiling that is on offer - rather than working to try and get hard and fast information that may not be forthcoming, sometimes its important to read between the lines for this sort of stuff - its amazing what you can learn about a business - and how it needs to be helped - simply through observing it!!

Steve