How To Build A Super Targeted Audience

The Past

Door to door salesmen - telesales calls during dinner - cultural memes that millennials don’t even know about, existed for a reason - they took a B2C product and put it directly in front of the consumer.  Aside from being massively inefficient, such an invasive approach pissed more people off than it pleased.

The Now

While ads on billboards, television and websites solve for efficiency and invasiveness, they lose out on relevancy.  Programmatic advertising is certainly more targeted but the ads are already super annoying as they follow you around the internet like a lost puppy.

The arrival of social media delivered the opportunity for digital door to door marketing, but just as before, people found it to be invasive and annoying and of course it took forever.  While targeting influencers to share your message is more efficient and brings secondary benefits, the sheer volume of content makes it hard to cut through the noise.

The Way

If you could identify the customer who was interested in what you had to offer and find a way to connect with them directly without freaking them out and coming across like a stalker - wouldn’t that be awesome?

I’m playing with a number of different tools but the one that’s really beginning to stand out is The Dao - http://darwineco.com/dao/.  Originally conceived as a research tool built around IBM big data and cognitive technologies,  I’m using it to develop an audience of people who are talking about what I have to offer.

If you’re interested in learning more about your market and building your own audience, I highly recommend checking it out.

Feeling a little down? Listen to this, it really helps you feel better.

Image Credit: Yin Yang - Wikipedia