Audi­ence opti­miza­tion – the art of opti­miz­ing for your audi­ence’s needs – isn’t just about key­word intent. It’s about cus­tomer intent, and try­ing to pin­point what users are try­ing to do online when and where they per­form a spe­cif­ic query. Cus­tomers have all the pow­er. You must under­stand your audi­ence and the lan­guage they use.

Under­stand­ing your cus­tomers, where they are, and how to engage them is the back­bone of mar­ket­ing. This isn’t a new con­cept. It’s how mar­keters have been tack­ling things for years.

In the dig­i­tal age, how­ev­er, the chan­nels are com­plex. This makes your mar­ket­ing more com­pli­cat­ed than it’s ever been, but also more tar­get­ed.

Through dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing, you can find out how your cus­tomers search for your prod­ucts or ser­vices online, what their expec­ta­tions are from your brand, and where the oppor­tu­ni­ties are to engage, earn their trust, and pro­vide solu­tions to them at every stage in the buy­ing cycle.

This takes one impor­tant char­ac­ter­is­tic: the abil­i­ty to embrace chaos and give in to the flu­id nature of dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing. You must be respon­sive to meet your audi­ence’s needs.

It also forces you to look at opti­miza­tion in a new and dif­fer­ent way. No longer are you just opti­miz­ing for search engines. You are opti­miz­ing for the end user.

Why You Need An Audience Optimization Strategy

Every online mar­ket­ing tac­tic you hear of should have a well-thought-out strat­e­gy behind it. A tac­ti­cal approach to dig­i­tal busi­ness is lit­tle help in cre­at­ing solu­tions. This is because rely­ing sole­ly on tac­tics treats the symp­toms and not the cause.

Just as we must take a step back to look at who we’re opti­miz­ing for, we also must take a step back and know why we are approach­ing dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing the way we do. This helps us become strate­gic mar­keters.

It’s not about what you think you are or how you think it should be said. It’s your audi­ence and their lan­guage. Lan­guage and audi­ence are the things that trans­verse chan­nels, not opti­miza­tion tech­niques for those chan­nels.

‘The Age of the Customer’

Whether the cus­tomer knows it or not, they are buy­ing through all sorts of con­nect­ed chan­nels. The fol­low­ing illus­tra­tion by For­rester helps us under­stand the evo­lu­tion to the “age of the cus­tomer” and the impor­tance of audi­ence:

What do you get out of the abil­i­ty to pro­duce some­thing, dis­trib­ute some­thing, and under­stand some­thing using data? You gain the abil­i­ty to tru­ly know your cus­tomers

Any com­pa­ny that shows up and says, “I have the pow­er,” fails from the begin­ning.

or exam­ple: Com­pa­nies that use a com­bi­na­tion of dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing, mar­ket­ing automa­tion and prop­er lead scor­ing are more effec­tive­ly under­stand­ing their audi­ence and how they speak and com­mu­ni­cate in cer­tain chan­nels, mak­ing them smarter mar­keters.

This, in turn, is help­ing these com­pa­nies align their edi­to­r­i­al and pub­lish­ing exer­cis­es to be more focused on the use and val­ue their prod­uct and ser­vice it brings to the audi­ence. More recent­ly this top­ic has been labeled “native adver­tis­ing.” In real­i­ty, though, it’s just great con­tent about a prod­uct or ser­vice that is rel­e­vant to the audi­ence – and not just mar­ket­ing speak.

Understanding Audience Intent

Tra­di­tion­al search engine opti­miza­tion (SEO) has taught us that we need to iden­ti­fy queries in a search engine so we can choose key­words to insert into the con­tent we cre­ate for that query.

Audi­ence opti­miza­tion is a way of plan­ning and doing busi­ness online, across many chan­nels, dis­ci­plines and tech­nolo­gies – all meant to reach your audi­ence at the moment they need you.

• Are they ready to buy?
• Are they mere­ly doing research?
• Are they look­ing for reviews of your com­pa­ny?
• Is it from a com­put­er, or mobile device such as a smart­phone or tablet?
• Did an ad on TV or in print trig­ger the search, or did word of mouth or a social net­work pique their curios­i­ty?

The truth is, the buy­ing cycle almost always has more than one of these ele­ments.

You might think the research and shop­ping that occurs on your site is the result of one sin­gu­lar action by the user. They wake up one day and decide they need your prod­uct or ser­vice, type a query into Google, find your site, research your com­pa­ny, and either buy your prod­uct or inquire into your ser­vices right then and there.

Research and shop­ping occurs way beyond the bound­aries of your busi­ness’s walled-in gar­den, before your poten­tial cus­tomer even lands on your web­site.

Leav­ing the choice to make that pur­chase or inquire about a ser­vice is typ­i­cal­ly the tail-end result of a process that began long ago.

The Purchase Cycle: A Story About Shoes

Jane is look­ing for dress shoes for an upcom­ing wed­ding in which she is a brides­maid. She already has the intent to buy, but she’s not sure where yet, or what type of shoe is best for her dress.

She’s on Face­book one after­noon, and sees that one of her friends “Liked” Shoe Com­pa­ny A’s Face­book page. She checks out the page and then signs off.

Lat­er that week, she queries [dress shoes, brides­maids] in Google. The search engine returns a help­ful arti­cle on how to choose a brides­maid shoe. It hap­pens to be authored by that very same com­pa­ny she saw on Face­book ear­li­er that week.

Rec­og­niz­ing the com­pa­ny name, she book­marks the post and reads it a few days lat­er. The arti­cle is so help­ful to her that she decides to fol­low the com­pa­ny’s link to its Twit­ter account, embed­ded in the arti­cle.

But she’s not ready to buy just yet. She con­tin­ues to do her research over the peri­od of a cou­ple weeks, and finds sev­er­al dis­count stores that match and some­times even beat Shoe Com­pa­ny A’s prices.

But Jane is con­cerned with the qual­i­ty of the shoe, not just the price. So she goes back on Twit­ter and asks the com­pa­ny about the qual­i­ty of their shoes, and to her sur­prise, she actu­al­ly gets a response from Shoe Com­pa­ny A.

The com­pa­ny sends her to a page on their site that talks about the hand­made qual­i­ty of their dress shoes. And because they want her busi­ness, they remind her of the spe­cial dis­count for fol­low­ers of the com­pa­ny’s Twit­ter pro­file.

Jane is almost con­vinced, but she wants to make sure they prac­tice what they preach, so she turns to her friend on Face­book whom she saw Liked the shoe com­pa­ny’s page weeks pri­or.

Now Jane is look­ing for a rec­om­men­da­tion, as many often do in the pur­chase cycle. Turns out, her friend bought shoes from the com­pa­ny in ques­tion, and could speak to the qual­i­ty.

The next morn­ing, “Jane the shop­per” turns into “Jane the cus­tomer.”

A sales cycle like this is not uncom­mon, and is the rea­son why under­stand­ing the path that leads to a query and a sale requires that brands be in the right place at the right time – where the con­ver­sa­tions that mat­ter to your brand are hap­pen­ing.

What Is Successful Audience Optimization?

One impor­tant stat to look at is audi­ence engage­ment. It’s not just about pageviews or traf­fic. What’s the life­time val­ue of your audi­ence?

It takes you so long to earn a cus­tomer. The last thing you want to do is lose them.

Would you rather have a con­sis­tent cou­ple of $100 pur­chas­es every month or so across 5, 10, 15 years, or a one-and-done pur­chase? Imag­ine what you’d get in return for con­cen­trat­ing your efforts on get­ting 10, 20, or 30 loy­al cus­tomers.

Anoth­er key to suc­cess­ful audi­ence opti­miza­tion: lis­ten more, talk less. Active lis­ten­ing, to where a per­son tru­ly under­stands your brand or busi­ness is hear­ing them, is tru­ly endear­ing.

Under­stand where a per­son is com­ing from, and let them be heard. Don’t hide or sti­fle or try to con­trol the con­ver­sa­tion. Allow the voic­es to be heard. Mag­i­cal things hap­pen.

For inspi­ra­tion, look at a brand like Red Bull. They spon­sor var­i­ous sports. Also, they launched a mag­a­zine called The Red Bul­letin, which cov­ers lifestyle top­ics that are asso­ci­at­ed with what their audi­ence does.

They don’t write about ener­gy drinks; they write about cloth­ing, con­certs, and extreme sports. While that has noth­ing to do with ener­gy drinks, it has every­thing to do with talk­ing to an audi­ence, in many dif­fer­ent ways, that may drink ener­gy drinks.

Also, look at Go Pro. They cre­at­ed an envi­ron­ment where users cre­ate video con­tent that helps the brand mar­ket their prod­uct. How many videos on YouTube can you find that peo­ple have filmed using a hel­met-mount­ed GoPro cam­era? Tons.

Key Takeaways

• With­in the flu­id nature of dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing, you need to embrace chaos, and be respon­sive enough to shift focus at a momen­t’s notice to reach your audi­ence.
• Audi­ence opti­miza­tion is about deci­pher­ing cus­tomer intent, and try­ing to pin­point exact­ly what your users are try­ing to do online when they per­form a query.
• Under­stand­ing the path that leads to a query – and even­tu­al­ly, a sale – allows you to cre­ate a strat­e­gy where your brand can be in the right place at the right time.

Author’s Note: This is the first in a series of posts on Linkdex that will offer vis­i­bil­i­ty into the real­i­ty of a dig­i­tal busi­ness that’s dri­ven by strat­e­gy. One con­cept you must wrap your head around in order to have a suc­cess­ful strat­e­gy is giv­ing your audi­ence what it wants. Future install­ments will look at the big pic­ture behind some of the most-talked-about tac­tics and issues in dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing. We will explore what you need to know to bring some much-need­ed strat­e­gy to the dig­i­tal busi­ness cul­ture you want to cre­ate.