The post I put out the other day about the chocolate bar that was ‘not for girls’ was a bit of a joke. It’s a real product on the shelves in the UK, and yes that’s how they market it. Do any girls eat them? I’m sure they do, some in protest, others because they just like the chocolate.

I’m returning to the topic of demographics as I’m currently writing this post, on the Blackberry, at an indie concert. I don’t remember the unfeasibly long name of the warm up band (edit: The Trachtenberg Family Slideshow Players, a very peculiar, interesting outfit) starting in 35 minutes, but the headliner is 20 year old English singer Kate Nash, who isn’t terribly well known over here, although this gig is sold out (about 1100 people according to the stage hand I just asked).

I was introduced to the music of Ms. Nash on my last trip to the UK, and I found myself enjoying her music, so when I found out that she was in town (DC) tonight I jumped on craigslist and located a couple of tickets.

Through a series of friends & family being too tired, having to work, or visit with their children, I ended up here on my own.

Arriving early, as I’d had to meet the gent I was buying the tickets from, it dawned on me as I walked up to join the queue that it was quite possible that I was going to be the oldest person there, and one of the few males. (Thankfully more people of ‘my generation’ and older started arriving as I waited for the doors to open, listening to those in front of me complain about the genetics paper they’d had to hand in that day).

Ok, so I’m out of my element, how does that apply to this blog? Well it could be:

1. Demographic targeting is a best fit solution, you’re most likely not going to appeal to everyone in what you consider to be your target demographic, nor is your actual audience necessarily going to fit neatly into one particular bucket no matter how hard you try.
2. When a user hits a landing page (the queue at the front of the club) if what’s presented to them doesn’t match what they expect they way just leave without a second thought, unless they’re motivated (a Yorkshireman having already spent money on a ticket is very motivated to not have it go to waste).
3. Maybe I need to modify my listening habits? Nah, my eclectic music collection ranges from Kate Bush to Queen to Bjork to TMBG to Marilyn Manson to George Formby, so I’m good.

Popular MMO (Massive Multiplayer Online) game City of Heroes is a game that’s been around for almost 4 years (April 28th 2004). Continual development, and ongoing maintenance of the game are paid for with monthly subscription fees from their user base (~139,000 users as of September 2007). But the team that runs City of Heroes has decided that they want to be more aggressive with their development schedule in order to ensure that they retain their users in the face of other newer, fresher MMOs.

How could they do this? Well, the advantage that they have over many MMOs is that their game is set in a ‘real world’ with roads, buildings, etc, whereas a great deal of their competition is set in fantasy sword and magic settings. Why is this an advantage? Well, with the buildings come billboards, and with the billboards comes an opportunity to sell in game contextual advertising. Take a look at the images below to see how they’re going to do this.

What this does for their advertisers is give them access to a user base that NCSoft (the publishers of City of Heroes) has detailed demographic data for. It’s not unthinkable that at some future point they may even set the ads to display differently to each user based on their demographic information (location, age, gender, etc). Now, this advertising system does have the option for a user to opt out, so it’ll be interesting to see how many people actually do (should they release those figures).

For a marketer, advertising in games such as this give you that captive audience that if you target correctly, can work very nicely for you. Imagine if Blizzard somehow implements this in World of Warcraft - a game with 10 million subscribers…

There’s an in-column ad and a full page display ad walking down the street, they both got run over by a double truck

The chances are that if you’re in the yellow pages industry you at least smiled at that, if you’re one of the other 99.99% of people out there, you’re wondering what the heck could possibly be amusing about that. Well I’m using it to try to illustrate how you should target the correct audience for your site, which should be a fundamental goal, for in targeting the correct audience you’re going to get the best conversion rate at the best price.

Understanding your audience
Obviously you do need to understand what your target audience is. You should be at least aware of what demographics / regions you’re aiming for, and you should have visibility into the traffic that you’re actually getting to see if that’s who is really coming over and converting into sales. Don’t forget that baking soda was never intended to be a refrigerator freshener.

Using the right verbiage
Write for your audience, if they feel that you’re speaking to them they’ll become more comfortable with your site and your company, and be more willing to convert. If you’re using PPC, research the right keywords for your target audience - Is it soda? Is it pop? Is it fizzy lemonade?

Setting the look and feel
If your site is to be targeted to professionals, then it’s obviously going to have a much different look and feel than one targeted to tweens. Do research, find out what’s apppealing to your target demographics, and tailor your site to that.

Picking the right partners
If you’re going to work with an outside company to design or market your site, make sure that they understand the target audience. In fact, try to find partners that understand that target audience better than you do, they’ll be able to spot issues and concerns that you might not have done due to your proximity to the project.

Targeting the right audience
If you’re doing PPC, make sure to use the tools that are available to you - geo-targeting in Google, MSN & Yahoo, demographic targeting in MSN, day parting in Google & MSN, etc. For your site, make sure to use appropriate keywords in your copy to try to ensure that you’re targeting the right audience. If you’re a plumber in Bergen County, NJ, it’s not much use for youwhen a consumer in Denver finds your site, you want to make sure that your location is mentioned on your site for the engines to pick up on where you are.

Monitoring and Adjusting your targeting
As I mentioned earlier, if you see through your analytics that your intended target audience isn’t converting as highly as other groups, you may want to look into whether or not you are truly targeting your intended audience correctly, or whether you are just going after the wrong audience. You should be prepared to shift focus if the data points you in another direction.

So what’s a double truck? It’s the name for a 2 page display ad in the phone book