Natalie Prout | Critical Mass London

Having the ability to identify your target market and market to them responsibly is an increasingly forgotten rule of thumb within online marketing. Far too often brands want to jump on the proverbial bandwagon and embrace the hottest, coolest techniques/technologies to gain praise by demonstrating how hip and happening they are.  What they don’t realise however, is that most of the time in doing this, they end up damaging the opinion their existing fans have of them, or are missing them entirely.

The biggest hurdle you face in targeting your online efforts is honestly answering the following questions:

1. Who are our consumers?

2. Why do they love our brand?

3. Where do they congregate?

4. How can we communicate with them without irritating them?

The last thing most people want is to be constantly bombarded by irrelevant and overly enthusiastic brands bothering them in their online communities and safe havens. And I’m not just talking about social networks.

Picture this: you’re having a romantic meal for two in a dimly lit romantic restaurant with your significant other when all of a sudden a 10 piece brass band parades over to your table to loudly serenade you. Inappropriate? Yes. Intrusive? Absolutely. Kind of makes you hate 10 piece brass bands? Definitely.

Now, how is that any less annoying then flooding someone’s Twitter dashboard with 15-20 tweets all in quick succession of each other? It’s not really. It’s just as annoying. And on Twitter, you can simply ‘unfollow’ the perpetrator, which is a lot easier then chasing people away from your table in a restaurant.

You should already know the answers to Points 1 and 2 (as you should know your brand if you intent to market it). So skipping straight to the more misunderstood questions of 3 and 4 – let’s talk about the importance of understanding where our fans congregate and how we should communicate with them?

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