Demographic audience analysis: What it is and how to collect data for it

Demographic audience analysis is made up of specific data points regarding your target audience or customer. This data is fairly easy to source using today’s digital advertising tools; however, the true value comes from analyzing it to better understand your target audience and how best to reach them via advertising and messaging. It is also important in building a sales strategy.

Let’s examine demographic audience analysis, what it is, how you collect the data, and why it’s so important for long-term revenue growth.

What is demographic audience analysis?

Demographic audience analysis is the first building block of understanding your target audience and learning how to reach them effectively. This type of audience analysis is made up of demographic data, which often includes:

• Age
• Geography
• Education
• Household income

This information is the baseline for most audience analysis and for a lot of online advertising campaigns. It serves to initially pare down your audience so that online ad campaigns can be more effective by reaching a limited population online. Instead of targeting all online users, you can work to more actively reach people you already know might be interested in your product.

A demographic audience analysis example might be that your demographic data shows that most of your customers are between the ages of 25 and 44 and live on the east coast of the United States. This information helps narrow down the types of websites you should advertise on, as well as the types of campaigns you might want to run.

How to gather demographic data

For everyday businesses that are interested in learning about their specific audience, there are a few targeted ways to gather demographic data.

Surveys

Using your customer database, you can easily send a survey to customers who have previously made a purchase and ask for some basic information. These types of anonymous surveys will provide a decent overview of your audience’s demographic composition.

Online analytics tools

You can also use analytics tools, like Google Analytics or other services to gather information regarding your site visitors.

With any of these tools, however, the demographic information you have access to is only one-sided. It informs you of your audience’s demographics, but doesn’t offer any information regarding your competitors’ demographics or demographics of the marketplace as a whole.

In the world of online targeting and digital media, a slight shift in your strategy could lead to a lot more sales—or it can swing the other way and tank your current revenue. As a result, knowing more about your audience and the online audience as a whole is of more benefit for all brands.

Why demographic data collection is important

As stated above, collecting demographics on your own audience is key to truly understanding who is buying your product. Knowing who your site visitors and buyers are is the first step in building an audience profile—or several—in order to continue to grow your brand and impact your revenue.

However, by only conducting demographic audience analysis on your own customers, you’re losing the competitive advantage of knowing how to reach a new audience. Imagine how much of an advantage your team would have knowing who is buying a competitor’s product. If their audience is different than yours, that can open up your business to a whole new group of people and give you the opportunity to win them over to be loyal customers for years.

On top of that, if you’re looking to expand your current product offerings, it’s quite possible a new product will speak to a brand new audience. Without the insight into who that audience might be—including demographic audience analysis—you’ll be unable to truly prepare for long-term success.

It’s also true that with more and more digital noise available online, customers are getting savvier at tuning out ads and messaging. The more data you have, including moving beyond demographic data, the more it will help you create personalized ads that can cut through online chatter. Personalization is one of the newer buzzwords within online advertising, but it’s on everyone’s lips for a reason. It seems to be winning the online advertising battle.

Lytics can help get your demographic audience analysis off the ground

When looking to expand your understanding of your audience, you need to move beyond demographics and your own analytics. A customer data platform like Lytics can help you create a well-rounded audience profile with personas that truly speak to who is visiting your site and buying your product.

You can also use your data to do even more in-depth audience analysis. Behavioral audience analysis, psychographic audience analysis, and more are all possible with the help of data.

To find out how Lytics can help you better personalize your message and move beyond demographic audience analysis, sign up for a free 30-day trial today or schedule a demo.