How do your customers use the Internet?

Posted At : March 27, 2008 9:11 AM | Posted By : Matt
Related Categories: BizToolkit, Sales & Marketing, JJHill Library, HillSearch

Forrester research, provider of ungodly-expensive market research reports, recently unveiled a free social technology profile tool. If you know the age, location, and sex of your target customer, you can use this tool to figure out how that customer probably uses social technologies. Profiles are broken down into the following six headings:

  • Creators – Write blogs or publish video or music online
  • Critics – Post reviews or comments on blogs and edit wikis
  • Collectors – Use RSS feeds and tag online content
  • Joiners – Get involved in social network sites like MySpace or Facebook
  • Spectators – Read blogs or listen to podcasts
  • Inactives – Hate and fear the “Interweb”
If you can figure out how your best customers use the Internet, it’s a short step to figuring out how to better serve those existing customers, or how to best reach out to new ones.

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webdoyenne's Gravatar This thing is so freakin' worthless. Paints large swaths of the population with a very broad brush. You can specify only age, gender and country. Nothing about education, occupation... And age 55+ is all one category, which means you're including working people in with retirees and the "old old." Not sure what meaningful information can be gleaned here.
# Posted By webdoyenne | 3/27/08 12:58 PM
Matt's Gravatar Ha, webdoyenne, I love how you turn a phrase! A couple of things:

1. You’re right: this does paint a broad picture.

2. While I’m sure there is more specific information out there somewhere on this topic, I’m not sure you’d find it freely available online. Perhaps the Pew Internet Project’s demographic reports (http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/c/2/topics.asp)?

3. I don’t think the level of detail available in this Forrester tool is worthless. Even figuring out broad tendencies within a particular population can be hugely valuable, especially when marketing and advertising budgets are tight.

4. I can see how one would use age and sex information in marketing and advertising, but how would you use your example of educational attainment? (Anyone out there should chime in on this, if you’ve got a good idea.)

5. I’m sure this free Forrester tool is a precursor to a fuller report from Forrester. I’m also sure they’d be happy to sell you this report. For, like, a lot of money.

6. Thanks for your comment!
# Posted By Matt | 3/28/08 9:33 AM
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