April 12, 2016
Times have changed, that’s a fact – and you can take that to the bank!
I remember a time, a simpler time – when Facebook was all fields, 3-way calls reigned supreme and if you wanted to reach an audience with an advertising message all you had to do was get a billboard and several million dollars! Ahhh, what a time!
But NO…we do not live in that world anymore – data is everywhere – stored, updated and ready for the taking. Scary? A bit. Awesome for marketing? Definitely!
The world of paid media on social is an incredibly exciting and ever-developing one. I count myself lucky to have worked with some of the brightest minds in the industry and been afforded the freedom by our management and our clients to stress test, play with and experiment to find the best solutions and results possible.
However, the way that we target has changed. We have moved from demographics to interests and now behaviours. Understanding consumer behaviour has long been the practice of the best B2C marketers – but I want to talk about its impact on B2B.
We all know that B2B buying is becoming more like consumer buying – more choice, more personal research before engaging sales people, using social proof and peer reviews yada yada yada. So why would using behaviours to identify your target market be any different!?
Enter – Professional Persona Targeting…
Twitter has bought in a range of data from Acxiom and Datalogix – combining it with web data and Twitter data to give a pretty comprehensive set of behaviour targeting criteria. There is a range of consumer based behaviours available. These include the way people move online and their buyer profiles, pen-portrait-type-stuff. However, what is newer and, to me, more exciting are the ‘Business Behaviours’ for B2B. Check out what we can target:
You will see certain similarities with LinkedIn targeting, however, this is the first time that this level of B2B targeting has been available on Twitter. Behaviours are exciting and could yield some great results. However, the true power, I believe will come when combining behaviours with more traditional Twitter targeting – imagine mixing behavioural data with traditional demographics, interests, keywords and handles – you would be able to build a very comprehensive set of targeting that would allow you to build B2B buyer personas never seen before in social.
Watch this space for part 2 where we will share findings to guide your B2B targeting.