• by Maxwell Knight , Columnist, August 7, 2013

For a brand, there is no one global digital elite. There is no all-encompassing group of users that every brand wants. The audience smart marketers are chasing is more refined; it is their own digital elite. The global digital elite is an amalgamation of the marketing efforts of all these brands, the average of a robust and varied population. 

For all brands active online – regardless of whether they focus on brand or performance marketing – finding their own group of high-value consumers is a critical and ongoing task. These customers may not only be the most likely to engage with or be motivated by the ads, they may make the biggest-ticket purchases or open the highest-grossing accounts. How then does a marketer go about identifying this critical audience? You start with the data.

Your website and CRM data is the first and best place to begin identifying your brand’s digital elite. Who are your most valuable customers? The answer may change depending on your goals. Is your brand a retail operation? Look for repeat purchasers or those who have bought high-margin items. Are you conquesting in a new or established market? Identify recent new accounts for known switchers.

Once you have assembled your initial “elite” group you need to find a common set of features to identify them across publishers and exchanges where you’ll attract them with advertising. Now is the time to use your data management system or partner (such as a data management platform, or DMP) to find common third-party data features that these users share. Profile data stored in your CRM could give geographic or demographic insights. Site analytics could reveal technographic features.

With common features identified it can be helpful to create an audience index to reflect how likely a given user is to fit your digital elite consumer model. Perhaps each feature has equal weight, or maybe one feature is much more reflective of value than another. With an index model built you have a scoring system, and now it’s time to apply that scoring system to your media buying.

If you are buying from real-time bidding (RTB) exchanges this can be a simple process. Through your campaign management or media buying platform (such as a demand side platform, or DSP) express the value of your scores as goals with associated targeting and turn your bidder loose. 30-year-old iPad user who travels frequently between New York City and San Francisco? Top out that bid! 30-year-old iPad user who travels between Madison, WI and Big Sky, MT? Maybe they don’t fit squarely within your “elite” audience, so you should bid less.

Advertising that you place by buying media directly from publishers can also be evaluated through your digital elite model. Using your data management system, perhaps in conjunction with publisher-supplied reports, build an on-target score for the buy according to your index values. Looking at your buys through this type of reporting can help you work with your publishers to refine your marketing efforts on their sites to deliver more of what you want and less of what you don’t.

In a hyper-competitive, hyper-connected world where people jump from channel to channel and device to device, finding the right high-value consumers has become the ultimate competitive sport. Savvy marketers can gain the edge by using critical data and insights to find, engage and monetize their brand’s digital elite audience.