If you think you know your consumer, think again.
According to a HubSpot survey, only 42% of marketers are aware of their audience’s basic demographic information, such as name, gender, and location.
When it comes to the online communities where their target audience spends time, only 31% knew where to find them. And a mere 25% were informed about the social causes and values their audience cares about.
If you don’t know what your audience looks like, where they spend time or what they care about, you don’t know how to market to them. Period.
So how do brands identify, target and serve engaging advertising to their audience? We’ve found evidence-based marketing, also known as research-driven campaign strategy, is the key.
Evidence-Based Marketing Approach
Booyah prioritizes data and analysis over intuition, guiding decisions with concrete evidence of what works. By collecting data from ads managers, Google Analytics, DSPs and consumer research platforms like Resonate, we can develop strategies based on concrete evidence and measurable results, rather than relying on gut feelings or assumptions.
This data keeps us from blindly agreeing when clients tell us who they think they should target. While some agencies may spend their clients’ money without first conducting thorough research, that’s not how we operate. With these tools, we’re doing audience research on the overall consumers and providing our clients insights on where their audience lives in the wider consumer universe.
Discover the Audience You’re Missing
Even if brands have solid consumer research, we use evidence-based marketing to uncover what additional audiences they could expand into. Let’s say you have excellent GA4 tracking on your website and a detailed view into your consumer website behavior. Do you know the demographics of the person shopping on your competitor’s website? A data-driven, holistic review of the landscape allows you to see where you can conquest additional audiences.
Resonate Agency of the Year
Consumer research platform Resonate recently named us their Agency of the Year for our dedication to leveraging the platform’s data and insights to deliver laser-focused media and messaging recommendations that truly resonate with their client’s target audience.
“Partnering with Resonate has significantly enhanced our agency’s ability to deliver improved business outcomes for our clients. Their AI-powered consumer data and insights have enabled us to develop more precise and effective marketing strategies, leading to increased engagement and measurable success,” said Madison Meagher, Director of Media for Booyah Advertising.
The full case study is available here: Booyah Advertising Scores Big with Resonate
The Data-Driven Life Cycle
Of course, every new client we onboard receives a research and landscape review. But what really drives the cycle of increasing returns is a systematic and scheduled infusion of research and data throughout the life of a campaign.
Evidence-based Marketing in Action
When we review KPIs in a steady reporting cadence, we layer in updated data Resonate every three months. This allows us to stay up to date on shifts in the overall market and sentiment for specific audiences.
Strategic Marketing Campaign Expansion
When it comes time to expand an existing campaign, we use this data to see what other media strategies would be effective for that specific audience. As we consider channel activations, as an agency we know search and social are huge, but it reminds us people don’t just stay on Meta. It gives us confidence to recommend more niche channels where we know your consumer spends time.
Data Plus Creativity
We also use the tool to brainstorm new messaging and campaigns to ensure a good creative idea can be made into a high-performing campaign. We use consumer values data to inform imagery and copy choices, so the ads not only deliver on reasons to believe for the product, but the reasons that resonate with that particular audience.
Evidence-Based Marketing Case Studies
How does this approach look in active campaigns? We recently created a new ad set for a pet food client. Resonate data showed us there was a significant overlap between the brand’s known audience and veganism and vegetarianism. While the brand had a robust sustainability program, that hadn’t been a message used often in advertising. We created an ad set around that brand value, targeted a specific audience and carefully monitored the results.
It shouldn’t be shocking that those ads outperformed baseline campaigns with a 32% increase in click through rate.
In another example, we used Resonate data to inform our media strategy for a fundraising platform client. When we dug into the performance data and when breaking it down by dayparts, we found the strongest results occurred between 9 am and 5 pm (core working hours). Resonate data showed that the target demographic places high significance on work/life balance, which tracks with people searching for a work-related platform during working hours. This justified shifting ad scheduling exclusively to those hours, which increased campaign efficiency. As a bonus, we discovered the same audience spends a lot of time on Pinterest, which allowed us to recommend an additional media channel for campaign expansion.
In today’s dynamic marketing landscape, assumptions about your target audience simply won’t cut it. By embracing an evidence-based marketing approach, prioritizing data and insights from platforms like Resonate, we can truly understand our consumers. This empowers us to develop laser-focused strategies that resonate deeply, driving impactful results.
From uncovering hidden audience segments to optimizing campaign timing and messaging, data-driven insights guide every decision. This allows us to prevent media waste, achieve our clients’ marketing goals, and exceed expectations by delivering truly impactful campaigns that connect with the right people at the right time.
