Learning Objectives
After today's class, you will be able to:
- Understand the value of acknowledging your audience
- Identify key library resources that will help you locate demographic information on and psychographic characteristics of a target audience
Knowing Your Audience
Knowing how to address the specific interest of a target audience is a key component of persuasion. It allows you to make choices in your appeal that speak directly to their concerns. In product marketing, knowing your audience allows you to maximize your profits.
To illustrate how advertisements target specific audiences, let's analyze the following Old Spice commercial. To whom is it appealing? Consider demographics, such as (but not limited to) age, gender, income, sexuality, lifestyle, etc. Can you make any assumptions about what the audience generally believes and values? Provide examples (e.g., visuals, language, editing, etc.) to support your answers.
Demographic Data and Psychographic Characteristics
It can be a challenge to determine what exactly a target audience wants. These resources can be used to find their demographic information about and psychographic characteristics.
Simmons Insights, a marketing tool, is a treasure trove demographic data. However, it can be difficult to use. Below is a short video of how to create demographic profiles for companies that may be selling products similar to your own.
For more complicated searches, please check out the following video from the University of Alabama.
- Simmons Insights (Replaced Simmons OneView as of July 1, 2019.) This link opens in a new windowData from the National Consumer Study (NCS), an annual survey of U.S. consumers' buying and media habits.
- Mintel This link opens in a new windowProvides access to two products. Mintel Academic publishes 600 market research reports each year for the U.S. and European consumer markets. Reports analyze market drivers, trends, market forecasts, market segmentations, demographics, and consumer attitudes and purchasing behaviors. Mintel Market Sizes provides market size, market share and segmentation data for global consumer packaged goods industries.
- eMarketer This link opens in a new windoweMarketer research helps marketers answer three essential questions: how consumers spend their time, how consumers spend their money, and what marketers are doing to reach them. By gathering data from thousands of sources and putting it into context, eMarketer provides the world's top brands, agencies and media companies with the most complete view of digital marketing available. Every report openly references studies and interviews that are handpicked from more than 4,000 research sources. Content is provided in the format of analyst reports, charts, articles, interviews/case studies, PowerPoint presentations, comparative estimates, forecasts, webinars and more. High level topics include: Advertising & Marketing, B2B, Consumers & eCommerce, Demographics, Email, Media Usage, Mobile, Search, Social Media and Video. These topics cut across all industries and geographies.
- Passport GMID (Euromonitor) This link opens in a new windowPassport GMID provides international business intelligence on industries, countries, and consumers. Content includes: international demographic, macro-economic, and marketing data; industry statistics; statistics on brand and company rankings; comment on emerging industry, country, and consumer trends; consumer lifestyle statistics, future demographic reports.
Industry and Company Information
These resources can help you understand the broad industry (or industries) in which your product exists. They can also provide you the names of companies that sell similar products. Looking at their advertisements may give you a sense of how to market and differentiate yours.
- IBISWorld This link opens in a new windowIBISWorld provides over 700 full-text industry reports, 700 US industry risk rating reports, and information on over 8000 Publicly Traded US Companies as well as hundreds of economic and demographic profiles.
- MergentOnline (company information) This link opens in a new windowMergentOnline (formerly FISonline) is a subscription-based service offering information on over 15,000 U.S. public companies and 30,000 non-U.S. public companies. MergentOnline is produced by Mergent, Inc., formerly known as Moody's). Mergent/Moody's is a publisher of detailed business descriptions, corporate histories and financial statements since 1900. The database also includes the Country Report module, a module that consists of the following resources: DnB Country Risk Profile, DnB Country RiskLine Report, and Mergent Country Profile.
- Nexis Uni This link opens in a new windowProvides company, industry, and finance information.
To access, click on Menu in the upper left-hand side of the page. On the drop-down menu, choose Company Dossier.
General Information
Once you find information about your audience and your product, these resources offer stories published in newspapers, magazines, and trade publications. This is useful if you need to situate your audience within a broader context. For example, you might find something about how COVID 19 is changing the way companies market to older audiences.
- Business Source Premier This link opens in a new windowAn essential article database for business research providing the full text for more than 2,000 periodicals, including about 1,000 scholarly journals. Covers virtually all disciplines in business and economics, including: accounting, economics, econometrics, finance, marketing, management, MIS, QMM and supply chain management.
Citing Your Sources
Remember to cite everything you find. For help, try the APA Quick Citation Guide.
Below is a general template for how to cite information from Simmons Insight.
![APA citation template for information retrieved from Simmons Insight: MRI-Simmons. (2019). Spring 2019 NHCS adult study 12 month [Cell phones/smartphones brands owned by consumer demographics-age, gender, household oncome][Data set].](https://libapps.s3.amazonaws.com/accounts/64983/images/business_Simmons.png)