CHAPTER 10
Finding Your Online Market
Perhaps the most important aspect of marketing involves finding and getting to know your market. On the most basic level, markets can be segmented into three sections: (1) fans and current users, (2) potential fans and users, and (3) those people who are not considered part of the target market. Perhaps this third group includes people who cannot or will not consume your products. For music, that may mean people who do not particularly care for the genre that your artist represents. It may include people who do not consume music, people who are unwilling to pay, and those without access to become consumers. For example, there have been mid-level and star-level recording artists who have enjoyed a fan base that includes very young children, for whom regular concert attendance would be impractical. Perhaps the concert is too late, too loud and rowdy, or is restricted to those of legal drinking age. Artists who are aware that they have a following of small children have been known to add a special matinee performance to the schedule to accommodate families with small children. This is an example of why it is important to learn as much as possible about your market so that you can adjust your marketing strategy to increase the likelihood of success. This chapter focuses on the first two market sections: current fans and potential fans.
MARKET SEGMENTATION
The basic goal of market segmentation (subdividing a market) is to determine the target market. Because some markets are so complex and composed of people with different needs and preferences, markets are typically subdivided so that promotional efforts can be customized—tailored to fit the particular submarket or segment. For most products, the total potential market is too diverse or heterogeneous to be treated as a single market. To solve this problem, markets are divided into submarkets called market segments. Market segmentation is defined as the process of dividing a large market into smaller segments of consumers who have similar characteristics, behaviors, wants, or needs. The resulting segments are homogenous with respect to characteristics that are most vital to the marketing efforts. That means that members of the segment have enough in common with each other that customized messages can be more effective. This segmentation may be made based on gender, age group, purchase occasion, or benefits sought. Or they may be segmented strictly according to their needs or preferences for particular products. The Internet has revolutionized the way markets are segmented because so much more data are available on consumers’ interests and purchase behavior.
To be successful, segmentation must meet these criteria:
1. Substantiality. The segments must be large enough to justify the costs of marketing to that particular segment. Because the Internet allows for more effective targeting of markets and the cost of reaching each member is lower, this is starting to change so that smaller and smaller “segments” are worth individual attention.
2. Measurability. Marketers must be able to analyze the segment and develop an understanding of their characteristics. The result is that marketing decisions are made based on knowledge gained from analyzing the segment. The Internet has allowed for data mining and behavioral targeting, creating market segments based on what Internet users purchase online and what types of sites they visit. For example, based on weather reports and restaurant listings online, a search engine company can determine where someone lives. And based on searches they have conducted on the Web and what keywords they have used, the company can determine what products that person might be interested in receiving information about (Jesdanun, 2007).
3. Accessibility. The segment must be reachable through existing channels of communication and distribution. With web marketing, accessibility is no longer the problem it once was. The only limitations are with the technology—some users still have dial-up Internet service and care should be taken not to overload them with slow-loading files.
4. Responsiveness. The segment must have the potential to respond to the marketing efforts in a positive way, by purchasing the product. Internet users are becoming more comfortable with purchasing products online. Services such as PayPal have increased the willingness of consumers to deal with small, unknown web vendors with confidence and ease. However, there are still some segments of the market whose members are reluctant to order products online for security reasons, because they do not possess a credit card, or because they are unwilling to provide the credit card number to the vendor.
Market Segments
The process of segmenting markets is done in stages. In the first step, segmentation variables are selected and the market is separated along those partitions. The most appropriate variables for segmentation will vary from product to product. The appropriateness of each segmentation factor is determined by its relevance to the situation. For example, age may be a significant factor for products that are age related, such as acne medicine or denture adhesive. For other products, age may not be as significant. After the salient market characteristics are determined and the market is segmented, each segment is then profiled to determine its distinctive demographic and behavioral characteristics. Then the segment is analyzed to determine its potential for sales. The company’s target markets are chosen from among the segments determined at this stage.
There is no single correct way to segment markets. Segmentation must be done in a way that maximizes marketing potential. This is done by successfully targeting each market segment with a uniquely tailored plan—one that addresses the particular needs of the segment. Markets are most commonly segmented based on a combination of geographics, demographics, personality or psychographics, and actual purchase behavior. Traditional marketing has relied on these types of segments or combinations of them (using some demographics combined with psychographics), but it has been evolving to include more purchase behavior as technology provides a means for measurement. Behavior segmentation is a more effective way to segment markets, because it is more closely aligned with propensity to consume the product of interest.
We’ve Got Our Segments, Now What?
Target marketing involves identifying a market segment to “go after” with some sort of marketing campaign. The decisions about what that campaign should involve are made based on information gathered about the market segment. Table 10.1 lists some of the information you might want to know about your target market.
Once you know these characteristics about your target market, you can decide what to say and where to say it.
Marketing Research Companies
There are several marketing research firms that collect and provide data and analyses on consumer groups. Many of these specialize in Internet consumers, and several also cover the recording industry and technology. Generally, the reports are for sale, and it may be worth purchasing one or two before starting out on a new venture for an artist or a label. These companies are also contracted by the various industry associations to conduct specialized research that is then made available to association members.
Forrester Research is one of the major market research firms focused on the Internet and technology; the company conducts research for the recording industry on all aspects of music and the Internet. Forrester also offers custom research and consulting services to its clients. Jupitermedia Corporation is a top provider of original information, images, research, and events for information technology, business, and creative professionals. The associations often hire Jupitermedia to conduct and report on online music consumers. Edison Media Research is a leader in political, radio, and music industry research with clients that include major labels and broadcast groups. Music Forecasting does custom research projects on artist imaging and positioning.
The NPD Group, recently acquired by Ipsos, provides marketing research services through a combination of point-of-sales data and information derived from a consumer panel. NPD’s research covers music, movies, software, technologies, video games, and many other product groups. ComScore offers consulting and research services to clients in the entertainment and technology industries and conducts audience measurements on web site usage through its Media Metrix division. Taylor Nelson Sofres, a UK firm, provides both syndicated and custom research of media usage and consumer behavior. Based in France, IPSOS is a global group of researchers providing survey-based research on consumer behavior. BigChampagne (owned by Clear Channel) tracks online P2P usage and reports, among other things, the most popular songs on P2P networks. ResearchMusic is an online music service that also offers free music market research to registered customers. OTX is an online consumer research and consulting firm.
For customized research, the company Indie Marketer provides market analysis services and helps direct marketing campaigns to advance artist careers (www.indiemarketer.com).
TRACKING CONSUMER BEHAVIOR ON THE WEB
Before the emergence of the Internet, marketing researchers used a variety of techniques to learn more about consumer behavior. Many of these studies were not comprehensive, meaning that shopping behavior may be measured on one group of consumers while advertising exposure is measured on another. It was difficult to conduct a comprehensive measurement program without being intrusive. One company attempted to measure media consumption and consumer purchases in the same household. Generally, participants had to subject themselves to extensive monitoring and extraordinary procedures to collect the data. In some ways, that made them unlike the general marketplace to which the results would be generalized. So the measuring had a tendency to get in the way of the natural consumer behavior. With the Internet, data collection is more transparent—web users are not really aware that their movements through the Web are being recorded and analyzed.
Cookies
The Internet has made it easy to track what consumers do, where they go, and what interests they have. One way of keeping track of that data is through the use of cookies. Webopedia defines cookies as a “message given to a Web browser by a Web server. The browser stores the message in a text file. The message is then sent back to the server each time the browser requests a page from the server.” David Whalen made this analogy on www.cookiecentral.com:
You drop something off [at the dry cleaners], and get a ticket. When you return with the ticket, you get your clothes back. If you don’t have the ticket, then the [dry cleaner] man doesn’t know which clothes are yours. In fact, he won’t be able to tell whether you are there to pick up clothes, or a brand new customer. As such, the ticket is critical to maintaining state between you and the laundry man.
Webopedia goes on to explain: “The main purpose of cookies is to identify users and possibly prepare customized Web pages for them. When you enter a Web site using cookies, you may be asked to fill out a form providing such information as your name and interests. This information is packaged into a cookie and sent to your web browser which stores it for later use.” So when you return to that same web site, your browser will send the cookie to the web server letting it know who you are—it’s your ID card or your frequent shopper card. Then, the server can use this information to load up personalized web pages that may include content that interests you, based on information the site collected the last time you visited. So, for example, instead of seeing just a generic welcome page you might see a welcome page with your name and features on it. The use of cookies is frowned upon by privacy advocates but hailed by marketers and webmasters alike in its ability to offer customized information to visitors.
Collaborative Filters
Collaborative filtering software examines a user’s past preferences and compares them with other users who have similar interests. When that user’s interests are found to match another group of users, the system starts making suggestions of other things that members of this group like. In the article “Collaborative Filtering,” author Francis Heylighen (2001) stated, “The main idea is to automate the process of ‘word-of-mouth’ by which people recommend products or services to one another. If you need to choose between a variety of options with which you do not have any experience, you will often rely on the opinions of others who do have such experience.”
Figure 10.1
Suppose you normally never listened to jazz music, but you liked artists A, B, and C a lot. If numerous other people who don’t normally listen to jazz also like A, B, and C, but also like band D, the system might suggest D to you and be relatively confident that you’ll like it. Amazon. com uses the technology to recommend other products with its “people who bought this product also purchased these other products” feature. Unlike previous music sorting procedures that required judgments based on personal tastes and opinions, web-based collaborative filtering is usually a process developed through the input of consumers. So we now have consumers dictating which songs belong in which category and should sit beside each other on playlists. Web 2.0 has increased the user-generated process by allowing users to create and share their playlists with other members of the social networking world. Through services such as imeem and iLike, data is gathered when members group songs together into playlists. That cumulative information, combined with an individual user’s profile and activities, helps the system make intelligent recommendations of additional music each user is likely to enjoy.
Collaborative filtering can help artists and their marketing analysts determine where an artist fits in relative to other artists, but only if the artist has a large enough following to be included on one or more collaborative filtering web sites. (See the section on determining the target market for your artist.)
GENERAL INFORMATION ON FINDING YOUR MARKET ONLINE
Author Frances Vincent, in her book MySpace for Musicians, brought up some good points for identifying your target market. Among those, Vincent suggested asking your fans directly; researching contemporaries and competitors; becoming a student of pop culture by listening, watching, reading, and going places; and networking.
One marketing article by Donna Gunter (2006) put it in these terms: “Are you fishing where the fish are?” Gunter went on to describe several research tools available online to help research the target market. Here is an expanded list of those sources:
1. Professional associations. They generally have information related to the market based on commissioned research studies. For the music business, that would include, but is not limited to, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS), the National Association of Recording Merchandisers (NARM), the Association of Independent Music (AIM), various genre-specific trade organizations, and the International Federation of Phonographic Industries (IFPI).
2. Professional conferences. Many of the trade associations hold annual conferences with panels and presentation on the latest research in consumer trends. Several notable conferences worth attending are South by Southwest, NARM, and MIDEM.
3. Trade and consumer publications. Read up on the market and the industry by subscribing to the top publications. For the music business that would include, but is not limited to, Billboard, CMJ Network, Radio and Records, Pollstar, Hollywood Reporter, Rolling Stone and Variety. Check out Billboard. biz. There are also genre-specific magazines such as Source, Vibe, Country Weekly, Downbeat, Remix, Christian Musician, and Alternative Press.
| Table 10.2 Industry Organizations | |
| Music Industry Trade Associations | |
| National Association for Recording Merchandisers (NARM) | www.narm.com |
| National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) | www.grammy.com |
| American Association of Independent Music | www.a2im.org |
| International Federation of Phonographic Industries (IFPI) | www.ifpi.org |
| Songwriters Guild of America (SGA) | www.songwriters.org |
| American Federation of Musicians | www.afm.org |
| Audio Engineering Society | www.aes.org |
| National Association of Recording Industry Professionals (NARIP) | www.narip.com |
| National Association of Broadcasters | www.nab.org |
| International Alliance for Women in Music | www.iawm.org |
Source:http://musicnewsdaily.com/org.html.
| Table 10.3 Industry Conferences | |
| Examples of Industry Conferences | |
| Billboard Magazine sponsored events | South by Southwest SXSW Music & Media Conference: Austin, Texas |
| The music industry’s most powerful business-to-business events, including Digital Music Live, Mobile Entertainment Live, Billboard Music and Money Symposium, Billboard Touring Conference and Awards, R&B Hip Hop Conference and Awards, Latin Music Conference and Awards, and more. www.billboardevents.com/billboardevents/index.jsp | Showcases hundreds of musical acts from around the globe on more than 50 stages in downtown Austin. By day, conference registrants do business in the SXSW Trade Show in the Austin Convention Center and partake of a full agenda of informative, provocative panel discussions featuring hundreds of speakers of international stature. www.sxsw.com |
| Midem: Palais de Festivals, Cannes, France | Radio and Records Magazine R&R Convention |
| Nearly 10,000 music and technology professionals from more than 90 different countries, including delegates from the recording, publishing, live, digital, mobile, and branding sectors gather to do deals, network, learn, and check out new talent. www.midem.com | Attracting the top broadcast and recording-industry executives from around the country, the R&R Convention is recognized as the premier annual conference for the radio and record industries. www.radioandrecords.com/Conventions/RRconvention.asp |
| Millennium Music Conference | Audio Engineering Society |
| For over a decade, the Millennium Music Conference has educated emerging talent, showcased new music and entertained the community. Music industry professionals attend as panelists, speakers, mentors, exhibitors, and talent scouts network, do business, and share their experience with musicians, registrants, and attendees. The community joins in the celebration of emerging talent, independent artists, and new music. http://musicconference.net/mmc12 | Conventions are held annually in the United States and Europe. Each convention has valuable educational opportunities, including a full program of technical papers, seminars, and workshops covering current research and new concepts and applications. An integral part of each convention is a comprehensive exhibit of professional equipment. www.aes.org/events |
| National Association of Recording Merchandisers | ||
| The NARM Annual Convention & Marketplace is considered the industry’s premier venue to learn, discuss, and meet. Industry players come together to make business deals, hear live music, get the latest research, see the most up-to-date technology, showcase new product lines, hammer out solutions to industry issues, and network to find new business partners. www.narm.com/esam/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Convention | ||
4. Online discussion forums/lists. Go for the industry-oriented forums rather than fan-oriented sites. Entering terms such as “music business forums” into a search engine should return a plethora of sites. For example, www.starpolish.com and www.getsigned.com are good industry reference sites. Also try AllMusic.com and music.AOL.com.
5. Online networking. Find out where other industry folks hang out online and get to know them. Or visit their web site and look for a “contact us” link. Drop them an e-mail to encourage online discussion.
6. Blogs. Leaving comments for other bloggers in the industry can help raise your profile in addition to fostering intellectual conversation and learning from the bloggers. Don’t hesitate to leave questions in your blog comments—they may be answered by other readers as well as the blogger. Check out AOLMusicNewsBlog.com and Billboard.blogs.com.
7. E-zines. The use of e-zines to promote an artist is covered in the chapter on Internet promotion, but these e-zines can also be a good place to gain an understanding of the target market. If the publication is professional and successful, the publishers probably already know a great deal about their readership. Although they may not share that information willingly or without cost, the results of their knowledge and understanding should be evident in the subject matter of the e-zine. (For example, if the e-zine has an article on the quality of MP3 files compared to other formats, then perhaps the readership is technology oriented.) Gunter noted that reading these e-zines will “give you a great overview of typical issues and problems faced by your target market.” Check out www.ezine-dir.com/Music.
8. The radio industry. Radio has a long history of studying music listening trends. Radio stations routinely conduct marketing research. RadioandRecords.com has a section on ratings that lists the top radio markets and some format and demographic details on each.
Make It Easier for Your Market to Find You
In the early 1990s, Internet researchers alluded to the coming age of broadcatch, moving away from the days of broadcast, where multitudes of people consumed a common message or programming simultaneously. Broadcatch on the other hand, refers to the concept of media consumers seeking out programming, entertainment, or information. Under this scenario, the role of marketing and advertising shifts from that of “carnival barker” to that of information provider—being there with the product information when the consumer is in the market and looking. With that comes the shifting role of marketing to making it easier for the market to find you rather than you finding your market. Part of that effort is outlined in the chapter on optimizing your web site—the idea of being at the top of search results for the product category. For this effort to be successful, it is necessary to think like the consumers and gain an understanding of the process they go through to find you. What search terms are they likely to use? Do they always correctly spell the words? What if your band is an alternate spelling of a commonly known word, such as Boyz instead of Boys. Will your potential fans know to spell Boyz with a “z?” If not, all keyword-based advertising and search engine optimization should include spellings and keywords most likely to be used by members of the target market. That is when marketers regret it if they have to use a domain name with a hyphen, or an extension other than dot-com, because most potential customers may not remember the subtle differences.
Figure 10.2
Think Virtually, Act Locally
Be sure to find and post notices at every possible local site where your target market is known to hang out—just like sniping (putting up posters) in the nonvirtual world. If there are local web sites that post upcoming events and concerts, make sure to find these sites for each geographic market on the tour schedule and post a notice of the event, complete with viral components directing the visitor to the artist’s web site. Potential fans may be perusing these sites looking for things to do locally and may have no prior awareness of your artist. Again, this requires getting into the mind of the potential consumer and imagining the process they may go through in discovering your artist.
DETERMINING THE TARGET MARKET FOR YOUR ARTIST
Established artists with a consumer base have the advantage when it comes to identifying the artist’s target market. Generally these fans have been through some type of marketing research process as they were buying tickets or music, attending concerts, or just using the artist’s web site. All of those fan interactions provide the opportunity for marketers to gather information about the fans to improve the marketing efforts. Established artists are more likely to appear on collaborative filtering web sites such as imeem, where a bit of research can determine the extent of overlap in fan base with other artists. Go through all the music-oriented sites that use collaborative filtering to recommend music and search for mentions of your artist. When they appear, go to the profile pages for these fans and get to know them. See what other music they are listening to, and make some inferences from that feedback.
It’s generally more difficult to identify the target market for a new artist. Without a sales track record, the marketing department of a record label must make some assumptions about a new artist. Marketers would be wise to examine market characteristics that relate to other artists who are perceived as similar or who would appeal to a similar market. They may look at consumer information for more established acts and decide that this is the market they should go for. And at times, the product itself, in this case the artist, may undergo some modifications to successfully appeal to the “target market.” It is also possible to survey visitors online or at live shows regardless of size of an artist’s fan base.
This is also an area where online marketing and traditional marketing need to overlap. Data gathered in the real world can be applied to the virtual world and vice versa. At clubs and venues where the artist appears regularly, analyze the other musical acts that perform there to determine if there is any audience overlap. (It is the same principle as collaborative filtering, only performed in a more casual way.)
SPEAK TO YOUR MARKET
One of the most important aspects of successful marketing is in knowing how to communicate with your market. It is not enough to know where they are and how to find them, but you must also understand how to reach them with your marketing message. Certain market segments, particularly teenagers and young adults, will reject marketing messages from companies they perceive as not understanding them. So the message itself becomes important, and not just the words, but the look and feel of the web site, the logo, the images, and so on. These design elements and messages must be fine-tuned for the market, in the vernacular that the target market is accustomed to hearing.
In his book How to Promote Music Successfully on the Internet, author and musician David Nevue introduced a concept he calls “targeting by site.” The idea is that a certain segment of your market may be looking for or respond to something in particular or may respond to something of a more general nature. For example, if your artist is a blues slide guitar player from the Panhandle of Florida, perhaps you should design a web site around North Florida Blues in an attempt to attract anyone who is interested in that genre in that area of the country.
Landing Pages
Nevue even suggested creating particular topic-oriented web pages and submitting them separately to search engines. For record labels that represent more than one genre of music, the label would do well to feature more than one web site. The label would also want to create specific pages that feature each of the artists who are currently the top priority in marketing. These pages are referred to as landing pages. Landing pages are specifically designed pages that are intended to be the page that the web visitor “lands on” when looking for something in particular and are directed to your site. This page would be more finely tuned to appeal to the segment of your market that is looking for something specifically and has found you through the use of a particular set of keywords that indicate their interest. In an article titled “Creating Effective Landing Pages” on TamingtheBeast.net, author Michael Bloch described landing pages this way:
In marketing terms, it’s a specialized page that visitors are directed to once they’ve clicked on a link, usually from an outside source such as a Pay Per Click ad. The page is usually tightly focused on a particular product or service with the aim of getting the visitor to buy or take some form of action rapidly that will ultimately lead to a sale.
(www.tamingthebeast.net/articles5/landing-pages.htm)
Bloch explained that too many web site marketers labor under the assumption that the product purchase scenario goes like this: The customer arrives at the company’s home page, the customer then selects an option from a menu or from an offer on the page, the customer clicks to the page with the product he or she is interested in, and then the customer buys. But it often does not work that way.
Landing pages are particularly useful to multiartist sites like nashvilleim.com. John Haring of Nashville Independent Music.com stated, “On nashvilleim. com, every artist has their own unique landing page address and is given custom MySpace banners and web site links to make the landing page almost like the home page of their own web site. In fact, some artists use it, along with MySpace, as their only web site.”
The landing page should be the first page that customers are directed to when they have found your product and your web site through search engine keywords, through online advertising, or in response to your e-mail touting the particular product. At that point, the customers know what they want, the seller knows what the customers want, and the seller should deliver the customers to the product as quickly as possible. One analogy is that if a customer wanted to buy a pair of tennis shoes and the retailer had the ability to magically transport the customer to the correct shoe rack in the correct store, why would the retailer drop the customer off at the front entrance of the mall?
Use different landing pages to test different offers and creative treatments. In his article “How to Write an Effective Landing Page,” Ivan Levison suggested, “You can test variables by sending prospects to unique landing pages. Just measure the click through rate and you’ll find out fast what works best.” The web offers companies a unique opportunity to target customers by creating alter ego web pages and web sites that appeal to each segment of the market. By using landing pages, a particular customer may never be aware of the variety of other markets this company serves.
Conclusion
The first step in developing a marketing plan is identifying and learning about your target market. The more you learn about that market, the more effective the marketing plan can be. It is important to reach out to customers with a communication strategy that speaks to them and makes them feel like the company or brand understands them. On the Internet, much of that involves being easy to find. To do that, you must get inside the consumer’s head and go through the scenario the consumer will enact when shopping for and deciding on your product. How do customers go about finding you in the vastness of the Internet? What techniques do they use? How does your fan base find out about new music and new artists? How loyal is your fan base? Is it necessary to constantly find new customers, or do previous customers keep coming back for more?
Then, once the customers have found you, it is important to give them the right information to help them make that purchase decision. What motivates them to buy? Are they driven by costs, quality, uniqueness, a bond with the product? Major corporations spend millions of dollars on research to better understand their market and can modify not only the marketing messages but sometimes the product itself, and certainly the web site.
GLOSSARY
Behavioral targeting — Creating market segments based on what Internet users purchase online and what types of sites they visit.
Broadcatch — The concept of media consumers seeking out and controlling their consumption of programming, entertainment, or information rather than being passive consumers.
Collaborative filtering — Examines a user’s past preferences and compares them with other users who have similar interests. When that user’s interests are found to match another group of users, the system starts making suggestions of other things this person may like.
Cookies — Parcels of text sent by a server to a web browser and then sent back unchanged by the browser each time it accesses that server. The main purpose of cookies is to identify users and possibly prepare customized web pages for them.
Landing pages — Also known as jump pages. It is the particular page a customer is directed to by a link based on what that customer is looking for. The page is usually tightly focused on a particular product or service with the aim of getting the visitor to buy.
Market segmentation — Breaking a total market down into groups of customers or potential customers who have something significant in common in terms of their needs and wants or characteristics.
Target market — A segment of a specific market that your company has identified as your customers or clients.
REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING
Bloch, Michael. Creating effective landing pages, www.tamingthebeast.net/articles5/landing-pages.htm.
Gunter, Donna. (2006). How to find your target market online, www.amazines.com/article_detail.cfm/124420?articleid=124420.
Heylighen, F. (2001, January 31). Collaborative filtering. Principia Cybernetica, http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/COLLFILT.html.
Jesdanun, Anick. (2007, December 1). Ad targeting grows as sites amass data on web surfing habits. The Tennessean daily newspaper.
Levison, Ivan. How to write an effective landing page, www.businessknowhow.com/internet/landing-page.htm.
Nevue, David. (2005). How to promote your music successfully on the Internet, www.promoteyourmusic.com.
Vincent, Frances. (2007). MySpace for Musicians. Thomson Course Technology, Boston, MA.
Whalen, David. (2002, June 08). FAQs about cookies, www.cookiecentral.com.