Utilising data to target the right customers

As aged care enters the era of increased competition for clients, new mapping tools that tap into rich demographic, consumer and psychographic data could revolutionise how providers target the right people with the right advertising material, Gill Walker tells Natasha Egan.

Are you wasting your limited marketing dollars on advertising that is either reaching the wrong people or not resonating with the right people? Deciding whether to put consumer advertising in the local press, household letterboxes, online, on a billboard, or a combination of these is a typical conundrum.

However, new digital mapping tools available to advertising and marketing professionals that tap into existing data might make it easier, cheaper and more effective to find suitable prospects in the residential and home aged care sectors.

The data mining technology, which is already popular in the travel and finance sectors, helps target the most appropriate people with marketing material that resonates with them and also identifies the best media channels, says Gill Walker, managing director of Evergreen Advertising & Marketing.

The campaign and mapping technology draws on a number of merged data sources including consumer survey specialists Nielsen, the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ census and household expenditure surveys, and market research company Roy Morgan.

In addition to the basic demographic and consumption profiling it is also now possible to profile on household personas for a much-more nuanced campaign.

“Personas are more psychographic insights looking at values, attitudes and lifestyles, much more than just demographics,” Walker tells ***Technology Review***.

Roy Morgan’s age-neutral Helix Personas classifies Australians based on combined psychographic and behavioural data into 56 personas in seven communities, which range from ‘Leading Lifestyles’ in the 100s through to ‘Battlers’ in the 700s.

Walker says they can use these combined insights to make better media and creative decisions, such as with the distribution radius, wording and messaging, which achieve better results.

“If we are doing a piece of creative and both people are 65, both earn exactly the same but one sits in the 101s and is more tech-savvy, then they are going to resonate with a far different piece of work than if they are the same age, earn the same and are a Luddite. It’s all in how we build the profiles.”

For example, for an aged care organisation selling a telehealth or home monitoring service, the search might be tailored to look to seniors, or their influencers, who are high-technology users as adoption levels would be higher, Walker says.

In the accompanying map examples, the red areas indicate households (typically 200 to 300 homes) that are more likely than the rest of the population to fit the profile, which in these cases is “a very high user of technology,” she says.

The map on the left is looking for potential users of the service by selecting people aged 65+, while the map on the right is aiming to identify influencers and targets people aged 45 to 54.

“These are examples of consumption-based profiles and therefore you build your promotional campaign around what would more likely resonate with someone in that area,” Walker says.

This level of targeting means that the advertising investment is not wasted and is more likely to yield results than traditional radius only distribution,” she says.

“By using these tools a client can letterbox drop only the best areas, look for the best locations for outdoor and even serve up Facebook advertising based on geographic catchment down to a 1 kilometre radius. You use this as a base tool and then add in layers of thinking.”

See the current edition of Technology Review magazine (January) for an extended version of this story.

Sign up to Technology Review’s weekly e-newsletter for news and analysis, as well as coverage of the latest products, resources and events. You can also follow Technology Review on Twitter. Send your company news, tip-offs and news on tech resources, products and events to negan@intermedia.com.au.