by johnt
19. May 2011 09:57
Recently there has been a healthy debate about ‘localisation’ of marketing activity, see dma link.
The discussion hinges around the concept of targeting marketing messages locally, the benefits, and how to target ‘locally’. There is some merit in identifying what will work locally, rather than attempt to impose a national campaign, however this will increase the marketing budget as there may be reduced economies of scale.
Geo-demographic targeting has been around for many years where as marketers we have attempted to analyse customers to help target potential customers into ever reducing cells. The buzz word would seem to be granular, the more granular your targeting the higher the priority of using recent accurate data.
As one of the contributor’s notes we have been targeting the population granularly using direct mail, you couldn't get more granular. However door to door distribution companies with more sophisticated targeting and systems are now offering more targeted campaigns.
If you are looking to target a local campaign it is essential to get the base information correct. Therefore a quick dose of data cleansing would be what the doctor orders to ensure any extrapolations (a wonderful word) are correct. Removal of goneaways, deceased and identifying movers will all ensure the base data is correct, making any extrapolations made more accurate.