A Rundown on How you can use Demography to your Advantage
Demography is the study of a vast variety of statistics referring to the size and structure of the human population. Businesses can use these characteristics to understand their audience in order to streamline marketing campaigns. This is achieved by grouping clients or prospects that have similar characteristic.
There are many Demographic groups, things such as children, age and income are all taken into consideration when creating groups. Here are a few examples of Demographic groups:
DINKY – Double income no kids
NILKIE – No income, lots of kids
OINK – One income, no kids
RAPPIES – Retired Affluent Professionals
SINDI – Single Independent and divorced
YAPPIES – Young Affluent Parents
YUPPIE – Young Urban Professional
Building a Database
In order to fully utilise and complete a successful variety of demographic groups relating to your business, it is essential to implement a database. How good your chosen database is, will determine whether your business has the competitive edge. All kinds of improvements can be achieved with an innovative database, anything from effective customer care all the way to targeting your audience.
It can become very easy to get carried away, venturing down avenues that are simply not needed to create a successful marketing campaign. It is best to stay with exactly what your business needs in its current state, and work on maybe expanding this research in the future. Whether you decide to purchase an ‘off-the-shelf’ package or pull out all the stops and build a database with all the bells and whistle, you are likely to find that the data is of a low quality. This is simply because users may not feel like they have to enter each and every detail if they are aware that the function is not used.
By developing your database using a programme like SQL, you are ensuring that you do not limit yourself as it can be expanded and easily customisable allowing for your business to grow without you having to pay out in the future.
Collecting the Right Data
There is plenty of different types of data that your business could collect, but it is important to consider the quality. A database can be an incredibly useful tool that has the capability of successfully segmenting and targeting your audience, however the results will only be as good as the quality of data that is collected.
The most important types of data to collect are things as simple as name and contact details; a customer profile which include data such as age, gender and income; important dates like birthdays and anniversaries; last but certainly not least, customer history. Customer history is particularly important as this will take into consideration any communication between your business and the customer.
These are not the only ways to segment your customers, you can use data such as interest or time since the customers last engagement with your business. There are plenty of ways that you and your business can use and utilise its findings, so if your business has not yet implemented any kind of demography, then this may be the time to get a plan of action together so you can better understand your customers.
