Examining Cultural Research In Digital Marketing
Cultural research represents many benefits for marketers interested in reaching out to multiple target audiences across class, location, and culture. Some marketers may have a niche audience that shares a similar culture and thus will focus on their code and value, while others might promote products that can be sold across multiple cultures and get involved in cross-cultural marketing efforts.
The benefits of conducting cultural research are plenty, but here are some of the most known:
#1 Export a campaign successfully in other cultures
When thinking about expansion, marketers need to rethink their entire strategy as they enter a new market or cultural community. They need to assess what in the marketing strategy needs to change, from the content to the messaging, positioning to visuals, and also media choices.
Marketing to US audiences can be very different from marketing to Europeans. A good way to perceive this is to watch commercials from different countries. You can see that the focus of the message is different, the visuals are shot differently, the pace, voices and length changes. This applies to cross country but also across cultures in the same countries.
#2 Adapt the positioning and offer to fit in a global context
If a marketer cannot adapt the marketing strategy for each sub-culture he/she is targeting, then cultural research will help to find a common ground that will resonate with most of his/her audience. This doesn’t mean being neutral but rather find a specificity that carries across these cultures. Maybe they all like the same celebrity, or they use similar channels. Using cultural research can be insightful in finding common patterns across audiences.
#3 Prevent potential misconceptions or offensive content
Cultural research is a go-to for preventing misconceptions and offenses that could attract negative publicity to the company. A classic example is when companies market a product in another country without changing its name, only to later realize that the name has a very different meaning there and ultimately this casts a negative light on the brand.
This is also true for the positioning or message shared. A focus on a specific area of the product or benefits might be something that is too private in a different culture to be talked about in public. By knowing the cultural background of the audience, marketers can prevent these errors and be more successfully accepted in that new culture.
Marketers in the digital era have an array of tools that can be used to conduct cultural research. These tools are also useful for classic audience research but make it easier to target specific cultures. The most common tool used for cultural research include:
#1 Social Media conversations
Using Keywords, Facebook groups, Twitter communities, hashtags, and influencers are powerful ways to understand how a specific community is talking and interacting, and how involved they are with your brand or product.
#2 Research
Audience research firms will develop their own research on specific cultural groups and make it available for marketers. This can be done by firms like eMarketer, Nielsen, etc. but also by specialized firms that will create dedicated reports and case studies on what made or broke brands when working on cross-cultural campaigns. Scholars’ research is also a beneficial source of insight, as they can be more in-depth and really targeted to specific sub-cultures.
#3 Dedicated platforms
Another way to use digital media to develop your cultural research is to follow the consumer journey through a content. By finding and visiting niche websites, influencers’ accounts, dedicated apps, bloggers and forums, you can learn about all the previous components we have discussed earlier, and see what values are most important to the cultural group. This can be even prolonged by consuming other forms of media such as TV shows of movies that resonate with the audience.
Let’s look at an example that shows us the importance of knowing your audience during the planning stage in order to increase overall performance.
Like all jewelry brands, Cartier wanted to make an impression for Valentine’s day. In order to do so, they decided to use social media advertising. This was because they knew the power of targeting and relevancy that they have, but also the high conversion rate that Facebook Ads deliver.
You can see on the slide the tactics and targeting they used in order to reach their perfect audience. Think about it for a second. How do you gather information so granular to understand what your audience knows, likes, follows and where they are buying already? Audience research is the key to creating powerful campaigns because they reach the users that will be interested in you and that you are interested in. In order to discover such insights, what tools do you think Cartier might have used?
A set of tools they might have used include:
- Social media and competitive research to know how their competition was positioned and who their audience already follows.
- Google AdWords and social media monitoring to find related interests.
- Demographic research based on their internal database of clients for the demographics targeting age and job.
Only a granular analysis of your audience and digital tools can allow such precise targeting. Facebook’s targeting tools are also very powerful at providing suggestions based on past campaigns and the entire data set of all ads that have run on their platform. Cartier could also have used retargeting or lookalike audiences to target audiences that were similar to their existing customers.
But research doesn’t stop at targeting. In order to develop the content for their ads and create the video, message, look and feel, they have to understand what triggers the audience’s interest. If you follow the link in the resources section, you can have a look at the ad. You can see how in tune with the audience the ad is. It is young and rebellious and positions the brand for this 18+, artsy audience they targeted. It became a full loop around the audience, message, targeting, and product.
This is a very simple example of how audience research is used in everyday campaigns in order to resonate and push well-rounded content. As a result of their efforts, Cartier saw a 2x return on ad spend, became 40% more relevant to men (as they were targeting couples) and 25% more relevant to women.
Can you think about another campaign that you have seen and thought they were well targeted in terms of location, content, and product? Think about the last ad you saw that really caught your eye and took you to the website and maybe even the product page. How do you think the marketers have researched and found information about your taste?
Now tell us your own side of this story.
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