Digital marketing makes global connections possible. Digital leads can be carefully nurtured, resulting in an in-person meeting and a business deal. But sometimes, that process is flipped. Customers are found through real-world interactions. Then they’re directed towards digital marketing materials.
These real world encounters aren’t occurring in traditional places for networking. For example, data indicates that New Yorkers are frequenting gyms more often than bars, so it’s possible that those after work, aspiration-laden drinks are becoming less effective. Does the modern version of Mad Men entail more CrossFit than cocktails?
Doug Gorman works in sales development at GlobalWebIndex, a self-described “market research company with technology at its heart.”
Gorman posted New York survey data on his LinkedIn, which indicated that 41.3 percent of respondents go to a gym on a regular basis, whereas just 22.2 percent are regular drinkers. “As you know, I’m actively trying to unload some business cards, and as it turns out the bars I frequent aren’t reputable enough for the likes of many of you,” Gorman wrote jokingly.
He continued, “So again I turned to GlobalWebIndex data, self-reported from millions of digital consumers around the world, for answers and learned the hard way that data doesn’t always deliver the results you want to see. The drinks are still on me, but I guess now we’ll have to do it at the gym.”
I called Gorman to ask about his post. He said he was messing around on his company’s data platform and building out audiences of New York LinkedIn users. He described his post as “cheeky,” though the findings here are actionable.
His company, GlobalWebIndex, conducts extensive surveys of digital consumers, which cover 35,000 data points. They look at demographic data, attitudes, lifestyles, media habits, and other attributes and then house all of that data in a platform. Subscribers can run queries and build out relevant audiences in order to better understand the online and offline habits of their consumers.
Gorman said that the company is looking to grow fast. Their mission is to “arm marketers all over the country with a very granular sense of every aspect of their potential clients and their purchase journeys.”
When asked if a gym-based approach to networking could be meaningful for a company’s marketing or sales efforts, Gorman said that many clients use GWI for their sales enablement process. A better understanding of prospects can help with messaging as well as real world interactions. The company can even utilize lifestyle and demographic data internally.
Gorman explained, “For example, we’re having an event here in our office where we’re inviting prospects and current clients just to socialize and get all in the same room. But the way that we’re inviting people can be a little more personalized.”
By looking at data points that pertain to professionals and C-level executives in the marketing space, the company can predict the most welcomed type of approach.
“It might be one of those things where, you know, they index higher for drinking, so we’d serve liquor. Or if they indexed higher for healthy foods, we might make it a vegan-focused event,” he suggested. “And we find that a lot of our clients are doing this with their audiences.”
But there may still be limits to the usefulness of certain data points. If you know that someone frequently goes to the gym, but you’re not marketing a fitness product, is the information still relevant?
Gorman told me, “I think that the world is definitely pushing towards a more personalized, customized marketing spend and marketing strategy. So I think that while every little tidbit about a person might not be relevant, it’s about kind of getting a sense of who the person is and what that persona looks like. You know, it’s easy to say, Sally is a single mother and has two kids, she’s probably going to be on Pinterest. But it’s another thing entirely to say, what is she doing on Pinterest exactly? Is she looking for new brands? How is she interacting with those tools that she’s using and how can we use that to kind of reach her better and with a better message that she might be looking for?”
“Generally speaking, it’s all about getting a more holistic sense of a person’s day-to-day, and what they care about and what motivates them,” he concluded.
