When I was a kid in New Jersey, I was in love with a series of low budget ads for Jason’s Furniture.  Each one started with a guy sitting in a crowded place (like the ballpark or the beach) and in an awkward blink of the camera’s eye, everyone would disappear.  In each ad the man would then stand up and exclaim, “Hey where’d everybody go?”  At the end of the commercial, everyone would shout, “They went to Jason’s furniture on Route 18.  Where everybody goes!”

Obviously the train of thought here is that if you know where everybody goes, you should go there too.  But simply going isn’t enough; it’s knowing where to go that’s key.

If you could reach your entire audience on social networks, how many do you think you could you find?  And, where would they be? 

Acquisition is a Numbers Game

Some would argue that the marketing industry has always been a game of numbers.  Nowhere is the number game more dialed than in the game of acquisition.  It’s simple math really, the more people you have coming into the top of the funnel that you can expose to content and offers, the better.  If you have a greater volume of people coming in, you’ll have a greater volume of people you can convert for some reason down the road (i.e. make a purchase, donate, attend an event).

In the old days, we worried about getting more postal addresses to mail to.  Then, we focused on email.  Now, across the digital landscape we can engage our audience across Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, Google+, and new networks emerging every day.  If you’re like us, you’ve spent lots of time and money to acquire more social network fans and followers over the last few years.

Knock, Knock. Who’s There?

BUT, who are these people you’re recruiting?  Are they the same as the people you want to reach?  Could you be reaching more of your audience on any of these social networks?

The real question for brands becomes, who exactly is behind those numbers? According to Forrester Research’s latest State of the U.S. Consumer Report, generational barriers are seemingly non-existent for the #1 social media powerhouse, Facebook; while Gen Y and Gen Z make up the contributing body on Twitter. In touching upon the idea of demographic segmentation last week, the next logical question obviously becomes, “How many of my audience members could I reach online?”

Really, It Is A Numbers Game.

Nielsen can estimate you how many consumers you reached with last year’s multi-million dollar Super Bowl spot or the number of households watching during this week’s Dancing With The Stars finale.  In that same respect, Facebook Insights will tell you how many people read the article you posted about the “Situation” suing his favorite clothing line.

But, assume you could tie these exposure estimates to specific members and segments of your audience.  Then, break the audience potential down in terms of the maximum addressable audience, and the game changes.

A Three Digit Number Isn’t Always the Best Kind

Referencing Forester’s latest research again leads us to the conclusion that 24% of ALL adults online in the good ol’ U. S. of A. use Twitter.

Say Giveo’s super-hero-specialists do what they do best and find out all there is to know about your email audience across social networks. They do some data analysis…blah blah  blah blah (ed: that’s technical speak)…then, they tell you that they’ve located 14% of your email audience on Twitter.  Think about what you can do with this.  Consider these scenarios:

SCENARIO ONE If you’re targeting a younger set of 18-22 year olds (38% of which are on Twitter) there’s good news and bad news in the 14% number.  The bad news is you’ve got to get that Twitter audience number up if you want to connect with them in that medium.  The good news is that you know how far you have to go.  So, armed with the goal of connecting with and expanding your audience on Twitter, you can quickly design an effective program to acquire Twitter handles and convert your email audience to Twitter followers.

SCENARIO TWO If you’re targeting younger boomers who are 46-55 years old (of whom about 15% are on Twitter) you can rest assured you’ve got your Twitter acquisition dialed.  Pat yourself on the back and keep doing whatever you’re doing.  If you’ve got more marketing dollars to spend on this audience, go spend them on conversion or cultivation.

What’s Next?

With audience discovery tools like Giveo, we can start to estimate these critical dimensions of where your audience is addressable online.  As well, we can look at them in different slices and by different characteristics.  Like what are these Twitter followers spending money on?  Are they donors?  Do they buy things through catalogs?  Using these insights we can build more compelling campaigns and offers than ever before.

So tell us, if you could know one thing about your social audience, what would it be?