How Well Do You Know Your Audience?

I worked with a major consumer product goods company once that insisted that a particular product it offered was to be marketed to men. New to the fold and not afraid to ask the obvious question, I said, “Why not women?”

All the market research in the world told them women didn’t like their product. All my personal experience told me they never asked an important audience: women.

It’s easy to assume we know our audiences. It’s easy to take the charts and graphs the big research companies give us and say, “Okay, we know who to target. We know what they want.”

So, you think you know your audience. Did you know that if you want to market to women today you have a better chance of reaching them via television by advertising on sporting events rather than soap operas?

You have three opportunities to guide your thinking in marketing and social media and none of them alone are 100 percent effective. You can assume. You can conduct market research. You can ask.

Which one are you doing? Which ones should you be? The comments, as always, are yours.