Putting people into boxes – a brief lesson in demographics

Most of us in the marketing world are familiar with the concept of targeting a specific audience to try and maximise the returns of our marketing campaign. Just as broader keywords tend to result in fewer conversions, should we not be focusing just as heavily on narrowing our demographic options? Humans naturally want to categorise, so why aren’t we capitalising on this fundamental evolutionary human trait?

As a Biological Anthropologist, it’s no surprise that I might have a bit of a biased view - in the world of Anthropology, demographics is of huge importance when it comes to the study of human behaviour. Different people, exposed to different forms of ‘extrinsic risk’, react differently, especially where spending is concerned! Extrinsic risk could be factors such as financial security, crime rate in the area that they live, lack of education, or even down to their particular living situation.

Area

Naturally, area plays a very important role in understanding human behaviour. Let me expand on that with a particularly generalised example. Imagine a young unemployed woman with very little financial security, living in an area with a high crime rate, exposed to drink, drugs and a lack of education. She is exposed to a lot more ‘extrinsic risk’ than a woman of a similar age living with her parents, working a typical 9 – 5 and able to save for a deposit for a house. They will behave differently. The first young woman is likely to be much more impulsive, this even applies to how she chooses to raise her family, (areas of low employment typically see higher teenage pregnancy rates), and her spending patterns will differ dramatically from the second young woman mentioned. Simply put, their priorities lie in very different places, despite their similar age, single status and overall health. 

Narrow this down to your particular business: think about the type of customer you want to attract, or even look at past sale statistics to see the actual customers you are attracting - this could help you target the right type of location and therefore get more for your money on paid advertising. Whilst Google perhaps still has a bit of work to do to improve the accuracy of their location settings, the principle remains the same. Maybe, later down the line, being able to pinpoint particular residential areas will become a realistic and beneficial tool.

Age and Marital Status

This might seem like a more obvious way of categorising people, but try not to think of age as just a number. If you consider the different hormones playing on the human body at particular age brackets, then things start to get a bit more complicated. And I’m not just talking about adolescence! What about when men get married? A man’s levels of testosterone are at their highest when he is single, then when he enters a committed relationship his testosterone levels drop. They drop again when he gets married, and are at its lowest when he becomes a father (it’s not unusual to see a man crying at the birth of his child, but you wouldn’t expect a group of single men to burst into tears at a football match, would you?) From a marketing perspective, perhaps fathers aren’t the best to target if your product is highly competitive, and so focussing on single men might yield the highest returns. 

A similar principle applies when it comes to women going through the menopause – according to the Grandmother Hypothesis, women who have been through this hormonal change provide an incredible benefit to their children in raising their family. Some go as far to say that this is the sole reason for older women’s infertility – they exist to help their son’s and daughter’s families grow and succeed. It’s worth mentioning here that we are the only great ape to see prolonged longevity past fertility. So, are post-menopausal women a more beneficial group to target if your business sells or provides family orientated products or services? It’s something to think about at least!

Final Thoughts

All of this leads me to believe that demographics is perhaps a little overlooked in the online marketing sector, and that possibly the effort it would take in setting up a suitable demographic profile would see an significant increase in conversions, thus improving your ROI.

This is of course just a tiny needle in the haystack of the study of human behaviour – I haven’t even touched on evolution, culture and the almost gambling nature of the online world, competing for both organic and paid search results (look out for my next blogs?!). But if predictability is the name of the game, researching your target market properly, and thinking about how certain groups of people react at particular points in their life, could help in building a more successful marketing campaign.

Humans are remarkably predictable after all, so you might as well try to capitalise on it!