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Activity Based Marketing: A Step by Step Guide

It could help you improve your client outreach and potentially increase your sales!
Aaron Drotts

Digital Marketing Specialist, Intertek Alchemy

Today, there are more company marketing departments than ever before. There are marketing departments that focus on direct mail campaigns; others that focus on online ads; and an increasing number of companies who rely on activity-based marketing (ABM).

What Is Activity Based Marketing?

Activity-based marketing is a strategy used by many small businesses to reach their target audience. It can be used both online and offline, though it is most frequently associated with the digital world; specifically social media activity.

The activity-based approach works because it engages potential customers by tailoring your message to what they actually want or need. This allows you to build relationships with your prospects enabling them to make smarter decisions in the long run while also creating strong brand recognition for your business.

Activity-based marketing is an activity-focused digital marketing strategy that prioritizes the activity of your audience, not just their demographics. With activity based marketing, you use activity data to learn more about what your prospects want and provide them with valuable content and resources in real-time. Activity-based targeting can be used for anything from growing a following on social media to increasing engagement with email campaigns and nurturing leads through lead generation activities online.

How Does Activity Based Marketing Help Marketers Reach Their Goals?

Because activity-based marketing focuses on people’s activity — rather than solely on their demographic information — it helps marketers better understand who they’re trying to reach. In turn, this increases the relevancy of messages sent to audiences, helping marketers achieve their goals. With activity-based marketing, you can effectively reach customers online when they are looking for your product or service in specific purchase stages.

Activity based marketing uses activity & behavior to determine who your target audience is and create a message that engages them the most. It requires businesses to develop comprehensive profiles of their customers in order to determine what activity will be most useful in reaching them — and then allows marketers to use that data across different types of activity channels. An activity channel is simply a form of communication used by you with your customers, such as email, text messaging, social media posts, etc). For example, if an activity-focused marketer wanted to send one piece of content but needed two separate messages aimed at two different audiences, activity-based marketing would allow that marketer to use the activity data from each audience to develop two different messages.

Step by Step Guide

Step 1: Define your target audience

The first step of activity-based marketing is defining your target audience. Activity-based marketers understand it’s important to know the difference between who and what you’re targeting and consider how those differences affect your efforts. For instance, if you’re a pet food brand, activity-based marketing would most likely treat millenials differently from senior citizens.

Step 2: Know the activity data that defines your audience

After you’ve defined your target audience, activity-based marketers need to understand activity data that describes their target audience. This is required because after you have a good understanding of who your target audience is and what activity they use most, you can start tailoring content to fit those behaviors. For example, if your customers are using Pinterest as an activity channel but you aren’t being active on there with them, it’s time for a change!

Step 3: Use activity data to determine your customers’ goals

The next step in activity based targeting is determining which behavior will be most beneficial for your company to implement when trying to reach your target audience. Depending on activity data, this may vary by the person (for instance, if you determine two of your best activity channels are Pinterest and Facebook, activity-based targeting could have you sending different messages through each of those activity channels). It’s important that marketers know why they’re using activity-based marketing in the first place so that each activity channel can be used for its greatest potential impact.

Step 4: Use activity data to customize messaging

After being clear about who your customers are and what they are doing online, it is time to start tailoring content across all activity channels based on the activities of the audience you want to with. For example, if you’re targeting millennials and they tend to be more active on Facebook than Pinterest, activity-based marketing would allow you to send them different messages through those activity channels.

Step 5: Execute activity based marketing campaigns

The final step in the activity-based marketing process is actually executing your activity-based strategy. Depending on your business, this can look very different for each company so it’s important that marketers know their audience and know-how activity data has been used to help define that audience before moving forward with any activity-based campaign. This ensures you’re maximizing your efforts and reaching as many customers as possible through the right activity channel at the right time.

Does The Activity Sound Appealing to You?

In summary, activity based marketing is a way for marketers to figure out which activity channel their target audience uses most and provide content in that activity channel. It can be used across all aspects of your marketing, including email campaigns, social media engagement, and/or custom web content development.

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