In previous posts, we’ve discussed some of the components that top marketing firms know make a successful marketing campaign. In this post, we’ll explore why audience segmentation is so important to a campaign’s success, and how top marketing firms can drive the messaging themes and creative approach to the campaign.
One client of ours is a membership industry organization that represents information technology specialists and serves more than 140,000 professionals around the world. Its services to its members include providing services for IT professionals who need to gain the skills and qualifications required of their market.
The client partnered with us its 2018 program to reach out to its target audiences about the value it brings to this industry. Bluetext developed an email and banner ad campaign around several themes designed to communicate that value to its members, and to deliver compelling creative that would quickly get the attention of target audiences. In addition, the campaign used sophisticated programmatic and analytics-based targeting to ensure that the right target was receiving the brand message.
One of the first steps in our process to develop an effective campaign to reach the organization’s goals was to take a deep dive into its data and outreach list segmentation. We divided the campaign into four segments:
1) Students considering IT as a career
2) IT professionals in the early stages of their careers looking to move up
3) Mid-career professionals seeking to make the next career move
4) Mid-to-late career professionals seeking to stay up-to-date and relevant in their careers
For each of these four segments, we created specific messaging and creative for use in banner ads, paid social, and email targeting, with each prominently featuring the organization’s brand and logo in order to reinforce that awareness and brand recall. For example, for those starting their careers, we created themes around starting their careers, while for those in mid-career our themes focused on advancing their careers and becoming indispensable.
The results exceeded our expectations; the organization’s total brand awareness rose 13% points from its pre-campaign level. This campaign demonstrates why top marketing firms view audience segmentation as so important to a campaign’s success. Without a clear set of messages specific to each segment, target audiences would not have seen messaging and creative relevant to where they are in their careers. With those differentiated approaches, audiences responded far more positively to the campaign.