The keys to a successful filter, part 1: AUDIENCE

We all agree, a good filter is always incredibly effective in achieving marketing goals. But what do we mean by a “good” filter? To answer this question, we need to point out that the keys to a successful filter depend on 3 factors, which we will explore together in a series of articles. So, for this first part of the keys to a successful filter, we’ll talk about the audience.

For a marketing action, thus a Snapchat or Instagram filter , to be effective, it must succeed in encouraging your audience to use your product or service. Of course, when you produce a beautiful filter, there will always be returns (someone to like and follow you). However, if the proportion is not consistent and the conversion negligible, it is still a loss on all levels.

All this shows the need to know your audience, in order to answer two questions: “why” do people buy a product? And why do they buy it “from you“? These two questions allow you to understand your target audience, the one who is most likely to buy the product from you. If the first question highlights the need of your potential customers, the second one indicates how they perceive your product.

The goal is to determine “who” will buy from you. The answers touch on both demographic (gender, age range, etc.) and psychological (values, personality, behavior, etc.) reasons. If you play your targeting right, your product will have a better reception and marketing actions will be more effective.

Once you have established your target audience and built a community, it is not uncommon that they are not as receptive as you had envisioned. This may be because your target audience is too broad, so you’ll have to refine it, or you may have made a mistake in your targeting, in which case you’ll have to review everything.

We are going to talk about the problem of a too large audience. It is important to understand that a large audience only becomes a problem when it is not productive. Indeed, a large community of active buyers would not need to be refined in any way. You only need to refine your audience when a large portion of it is passive or inactive, as this may reveal that your targeting has included other market segments that are not relevant.

To refine your target audience, you need to identify three types of profiles: active, passive and inactive. You need to find out what keeps the actives, why the passives are watching but not interacting and why the inactives have lost interest in your content. Answering these questions may involve the nature of your product, your digital marketing content, your old segmentation criteria, or even changes in the social network algorithm.

The job here will be to continue doing what keeps your community active while looking for changes in your strategy to get the attention of the inactive and passive. If there is no common ground between these two objectives, you will have to refine your target audience, always focusing on the active part of it.

After all this audience work, you’ll finally be ready to trim your digital marketing to find the right filter for your campaign. Who do you want to reach? What makes them most likely to respond, share, buy…? How do you get your audience to respond positively? Has one action already proven to be more effective than another on the community? What do you want to make clear and how to make it clear to your target?… By answering these questions through the filter you are going to create, you ensure that it hits the mark!

To simplify things, it is advisable to create a filter that a targeted user can identify himself with. If you choose the Star Wars generation, a filter on that (even a little retro) will be of the best effect. In case you want to reach a younger audience, you may have to turn to filters related to the latest Marvel movies and series. A little imagination is needed to avoid relying too much on something you don’t have the copyrights for.