Commentary

Do An eBay And Ditch Demographics For Attitudes And Context

So somebody has at last said it. Just as "Mad Men" has bid its final farewell to our television screens, eBay's Head of Advertising in the UK Phuong Nguyen, has pointed out in Marketing Week today what we've all been thinking -- far too many people are targeting like Don Draper would have, and not how their data hubs now allow them to.

In the days when careers and the accompanying size of house and type of car progressed with age and men did what men do while women kept the home fires burning, that was probably considered viable. To be honest, it was probably only just about viable then, and it certainly isn't now -- certainly not now that digital marketers have so much individual data on people they are targeting. Why assume a set of preconceived ideas about someone when the data you have on them could tell you so much more without getting bogged down by how old they are and if they live in the centre of town or a village cottage.

It struck me in a conversation the other day with a young digital marketer that she is constantly talking about types of customer but then kept coming back to the term, demographics. It happens all the time. Even those who have grown up with digital still have a tendency to think of consumers by their age, gender, marital status, location and so on. Sure, these things can be useful background, but at last someone from a major brand is pointing out that this is all they are.

Context is the thing -- a customer's needs and wants are far more important than their age. The marketer I was talking to was from a fairly well-known company that sells goods that have a pretty predictable life cycle. Funnily enough, they're currently looking into how this can be used to better inform their digital marketing. By recognising a repeat customer, they have a good idea what they want when they arrive back on the site or start a search for a product on a search engine. This allows them to be distinguished from a new potential customer who will typically be misspelling a name of one of their products that a friend has told them about. Sounds an intuitive step which can help on search bidding strategy as well as on-site personalisation. Yet, still the conversation kept coming back to talk about key demographics as if two people who both wanted to restock a favourite product would necessarily be the same gender and be born roughly around the same time and currently living in a similar setting with comparable incomes. 

Demographics are an influence, of course. Watch drinkers approach the bar and you're probably able to say whether they're going to order a pint of bitter, a bottle of premium lager with a slice of lime in the top, a shot or a glass of wine. But it's not an exact science. That's what makes it all the more puzzling that at a time of big data, or at least an era of being able to build customer hubs, that data hasn't taken over from demographics or at least risen to the top more fervently. If someone appears to be in the market for an SUV, it pays to focus on what they want, rather than where they come from, because they may be a family man or woman who needs to put child seats in the back, they could be an elderly dog owner who needs space for their pampered pooch or they could be a millennial looking to fit a wet suit and surf board in the back. Each customer is different from the next and is likely to respond better to different messages tailored at their requirements rather than their age and income.

It's probably not the best advice to take this to the extreme and do away with demographics entirely, but it should probably demonstrate the point that attitude and the context in which someone is reaching out to your brand, or it's reaching out to them, are far more informative data points than an assumption that they want, need and can pay for similar goods and services as their neighbours and school friends.

It's something we've probably all been suspecting for some time now, only it's nice when someone who runs eBay Advertising in the UK tells us he's been thinking the same thing too.

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