Better Marketing Through Planning: A Framework for Audience Allocation
Milk’s Better Marketing Through Planning series is deep dive into the core elements that go into making planning decisions. These practical guides provide the frameworks, rubrics, and resources marketers need to build art/science-based recommendations. Over the course of this series, we will look at how to find sources of growth, allocate your messaging based on audience (presented here), which touchpoints to activate based on the consumer decision journey and determine the optimal channel allocation.
As a guide, these frameworks are built to be part of your day-to-day planning process. They are also a roadmap to most effectively use the MilkOS platform. MilkOS was designed to operationalize these frameworks to build consistency and transparency when approaching your planning. Here is Part 2, determining the optimal allocation between audiences to deliver the greatest return against your communication goals.
Keep it Simple at First.
Once you have determined where your sources of growth will come from: Loyalists, Vulnerable Repurchasers, Switchers, and New Category Entrants; you will then develop your target persona, or how you will classify your audience based on: sociodemographic traits, behaviors, and attitudes; audience size and availability and the jobs to be done; and you will then likely score them to determine which will deliver the greatest return on your marketing investment (ROMI).
The key questions you need to answer are Who are the most valuable audience/s to reach? What audience/s provide the greatest availability and efficacy? What is the proper allocation of audience/s to maximize business effects? Now you can choose which approach you want to take when allocating your audience:
· Penetration
· Blended
· Segmentation
Before You Get Started, Have You Thought About…
There are four valuable characteristics to consider when determining audience allocation and segmentation:
1. Measurability: First and foremost, the segment itself should be easily measured. This means that information is available on the overall market potential (size of the market) and the competitive position of the companies competing for market share.
2. Accessibility: Brands must also be able to communicate directly with critical consumers to understand their core segment and tell the brand story.
3. Sustainability: To do business successfully, profitability must be proven in a given segment. Long-term potential sustainability can be measured based on past consumer behavior.
4. Actionability: Finally, the brand should be able to produce a competitive advantage within this particular segment. The organization should have actionable opportunities to build a solid and differentiated position within the segment.
Factors to Consider
No decision is made in a vacuum, and the best decisions are based on objectives and context. But where to begin? Below is a rubric to help you out based on different potential factors that will help define your communications objective. Determining where your brand stands today will help identify how to approach your audience allocation for future growth and success.