Yippee ki-yay mother Arizona! The online marketing scene here is hot, like blazing desert tamales. Last night I had the distinct pleasure of speaking to the AZ-flavored “…ima”crew and MAN they build em’ whip smart here! CRACK! The crowd was jammed with seriously deep marketers who came to shred targeting swank. Let me tell you, the pleasure was entirely mine.
We dug deep into into Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Google Display and search targeting, with special focus on mashed up and sweetly layered retargeting hacks. This generation of targeting specificity IS the mainstream future-already-here.
Let’s face it. Previous generations of persona modeling, as pertained to actual marketing, were comprised of mostly bulls**t theories manufactured by intellectuals to express a utopian targeting universe. Sure, we knew back then to express our customer as a Molecular Biologist, working for the Environmental Protection Agency and interested in Cannon Beach, OR. Saying it as such (to each other) was easy. However, we could not TARGET her along empirical lines, in online channels, by that grid.
Last night at #AZIMA, we discussed what an extraordinary time it is to be a marketer. From humongous multi-nationals to guerrilla startups, businesses of all sizes can now reasonably define organic and paid search and contextual grids, with devastating clarity for various marketing endeavors– because now we can target them. We took that hot Arizona crowd for a door-to-door persona modeling trip, starting in the physical retail world, resulting in an across-the-board search and social targeting matrix. The session was an advanced shred session- how-to hack-fest for building one’s own customer personas from scratch as advised by intuition and search.
OK, I’ll admit it, after each speaking opportunity at some point there’s a moment to pull down the tweets to see how the session went, answer, say thanks, interact and usually do a lot of this, 🙂 and <3. Also it’s a great way to find out what attendees took away from the session. The tweets from AZIMA attendees were sharp, funny, dry, insightful, insightful, and spirited. Here are a few of my favorites:
Yep, I saw it coming, too. Dude, I was amped and that was coffee I was drinking at 8PM PT, 10PM my time. The day began at home in Duluth, Minnesota where we were all just wringing out from a 50 year flood. Here’s a picture of Chester Creek, usually a gentle and picturesque hiking trail.
Then we got down to business. Matthew got it right. Targeting is not the problem any more. We can actually get to nodes of users’ personas, that is the attributes that make them… them. Don’t tell me you have an ROI problem with social PPC. The problem is you not knowing what to say to them. It’s a marketing problem.
I remember driving customers with paper coupons using their FEET to the pizza parlor client. Many of us are steeped in email marketing to drive traffic, conversion and ROI from “Opens.” Getting messages to the customers is a given now. Figuring out what to say is a job for marketers.
Occupation targeting has been a favorite targeting attribute for years, first in Facebook, then LinkedIn, and now YouTube, Google’s Display Network and niche DSPs. Professional attributes are not just about B2B, that’s for sure.
YOU are smart, Mathew. That’s exactly what it is. We’re talking about psychographic variables research for Neuromarketers. That’s what AIMCLEAR is. We deliver tagged users to clients on empirical attributes relating to personality, values, attitudes, interests, or lifestyles holistically across social.
And about that touching thing…
I meant by social ads and organic outreach, actually. I was surprised and just thought, “Oh no, what will the tweets look like?”
Matt Siltala is a long-time pal from the international conference circuit. Ya’ll are lucky to have such a smart guy in the community. Thanks for making me feel so welcome, Matt.
Adam, we’re going to be talking a lot about this in coming days, weeks and months. Because FB has limited friend-of-friend organic visability down to a ticker and sponsored stories, the best way to think of FB is as a subscription list, like email. Think of metrics like list size (likes), email blasts (page posts), opens (% friends who go to the wall or off-FB content), and behavior in off-FB in conversion funnels over time.  Mashed up with serving FB Ads to friends, making more friends with content and FB ads, now we’ve got a paid/organic mashup that will yield out-of-FB KPI conversion models that compare to search in quantity, at scale and CPA.
Yeah Moses, the questions were fantastic. What IS cock blocking anyway?
Love love loved this next tweet!
Thanks to Jeff Walters for getting to the <3 of things. Oh, there I go again.
Thanks to John Mellor for being such a fantastic host and the invitation. And thanks, #AZIMA crew – we’ll see you next time!
Image: © James Insogna – Fotolia
