resonate - reaching influentials online
TRANSCRIPT
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REACHING INFLUENTIALSONLINE
A Discussion Paper on How Public Affairs Advertisers Can
Deliver Their Messages to this High Quality but Hard-to-Reach
Audience
2010 Resonate Networks, Inc. 12010 Sunset Hills Road, Suite 410 Reston, VA 20190www.resonatenetworks.com
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WHITE PAPER: REACHING INFLUENTIALS ONLINE
2010 Resonate Networks, Inc. 12010 Sunset Hills Road, Suite 410 Reston, VA 20190www.resonatenetworks.com
Targeting Influentials
Effective targeting in public affairs advertising requires a means for reliably reaching those who
are influential with regards to the issue. Resonate Networks custom research methodology
provides a campaign planning and delivery process, based on a platform of traditional research,
to identify and reach these influentials online in the context of public affairs and issue advocacy
campaigns.
The Importance of Advocacy Engagement
Traditional targeting is done through demographic or psychographic characteristics, butResonate has identified four additional approaches to targeting advertising for public affairs
campaigns. These approaches include targeting by issue position, political/ideological
orientation, mainline media behavior, and advocacy engagement. With Resonates custom
research, all five of these approaches can be integrated into building efficient online campaigns,
but advocacy engagement stands out as a critical input.
In almost every public affairs effort, a key objective is to find individuals who are going to take
action to support an issue. The term advocacy engagement refers to an individuals history of
being emotionally or actively involved in issue advocacy. This involvement is structured as a
hierarchy covering a wide range of activities from issue-based voting and research, to attending
rallies, speeches, or protests, to donating money or time to campaigns.
As the figure below illustrates, advocacy actions are predicated on other actions. For most
people, willingness to write letters in support of an issue usually precedes their willingness to
join a group and become an activist, for example. The highest levels of the Advocacy
Engagement Hierarchythe rarest and most valuable commodity to public affairs campaigns
are populated by the influential individuals and activists who recruit others and generate popular
support for their issue position.
Values,Beliefs,&Attitudes
Behaviors DemosResonateTargeting
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WHITE PAPER: REACHING INFLUENTIALS ONLINE
2010 Resonate Networks, Inc. 12010 Sunset Hills Road, Suite 410 Reston, VA 20190www.resonatenetworks.com
Identifying engagement levels and managing messaging and movement up the hierarchy is the
most effective way to build valuable relationships and drive action. Each level indicates arelationship status marker and determines what types of messaging and calls to action are most
appropriate. In order to execute the most efficient public affairs campaign, management of the
Advocacy Engagement Hierarchy requires that different segments receive tailored messages.
Too often, public affairs online campaigns devote significant resources to reaching individuals
without understanding how engaged they are or how to target differentiated messaging.
Resonates research and targeting methodology allows for this distinction and granularity during
the campaign execution process leading to superior targeting strategies.
The Need for Superior Targeting
Traditionally, there have been two approaches behind targeting online public affairs campaigns:
no target at all or use of demographics. In the first case, the campaigns committed to large ad
buys optimized for high click through rate regardless of whether reaching a clicker population
equated to reaching the influential target. The second approach, using demographics, just
doesnt say it all when trying to predict issue advocacy. Demographics are one piece of a
PrivatelyInvolved(minimaleffort/commitment)
ActivelyInvolved(moderate
effort/
commitment)
Advocate(moderateeffort/highcommitment)
SuperAdvocate(higheffort/commitment)
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WHITE PAPER: REACHING INFLUENTIALS ONLINE
2010 Resonate Networks, Inc. 12010 Sunset Hills Road, Suite 410 Reston, VA 20190www.resonatenetworks.com
thorough approach, but relying solely on demographics for targeting leaves too much to chance
due to the variance in the audience. Meanwhile, both methods ignore the full scope of targeting
possibilities.
Online audiences are increasingly fragmented, so casting a wide net in order to find a relatively
small number of highly-qualified individuals is simply not a cost-effective, or successful,
strategy. Worst case, it could actually be detrimental to public affairs campaigns, as reaching
too broad a target may actually end up attracting the notice of opponents. Previous attempts at
micro-targeting were educated guesses at best, based primarily on demographics and context,
rather than research and algorithms.
A better process lays out a reliable and repeatable way to reach premium audiences, such as
influentials, based on data and research. Resonate is the first company to bring traditional
research to the online space, enabling targeting against the Advocacy Engagement Hierarchy
through the capture of attitudes, values, and behaviors, and application of advanced statistical
solutions.
Innovative Research Creates New Possibilities
Not all issue supporters or detractors are created equal; they bring differing levels of
engagement and interaction with the issue. These differences make up the Advocacy
Hierarchy, and understanding these differences is critical in directing the campaign rollout and
managing ongoing communications for a public affairs initiative. Resonates innovative
targeting strategies are audience-based rather than content-based in order to provide this level
of support to public affairs campaigns.
Resonates proposition is unique in that data sets are created based on various combinations of
approaches to targeting (demographics, issue positions, political/ideological orientations,
mainline media behavior, and issue advocacy). With all of this information, web site visitors can
be evaluated based on their engagement with target issues. The partial data set below
demonstrates how granularly audience advocacy engagement can be identified and this level
of detail is available for dozens of issues which have been researched by Resonate.
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WHITE PAPER: REACHING INFLUENTIALS ONLINE
2010 Resonate Networks, Inc. 12010 Sunset Hills Road, Suite 410 Reston, VA 20190www.resonatenetworks.com
ACTION WITH REGARD TO GUN OWNERSHIP RIGHTS SUPPORTERS OPPOSERS
Contributed your thoughts about an issue online through
comment boxes, blogs, or chat rooms 29% 24%
Voted for a political candidate or political party based
primarily on your views on a specific issue54% 44%
Contributed to a political candidate or party 16% 22%
Worked for a political party or political candidate 6% 10%
Contributed money to a group to advocate for an issue 18% 22%
Understanding the degree to which a citizen expresses their support for an issue enables the
targeting of people not only with message content, but also with the appropriate call to action.
For some segments, their advocacy maxes out at support at the ballot box; for others, they may
go as far as to write a letter to their local newspaper, contact their Congressman, or attend a
public meeting to speak out in support of the position. Knowing in advance these distinctions,
and targeting according to propensity to act, greatly enhances the effectiveness and efficiency
of advocacy efforts and helps control and encourage movement up the hierarchy towards
influential segments, while reaching current influentials at their utmost potential.
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WHITE PAPER: REACHING INFLUENTIALS ONLINE
2010 Resonate Networks, Inc. 12010 Sunset Hills Road, Suite 410 Reston, VA 20190www.resonatenetworks.com
Resonates campaign planning and execution leverages the richly-nuanced segmentation
brought forth in this custom research, enabling the implementation of online campaigns
targeting issue position and advocacy engagement. For each of the engagement levels and for
each of the issue positions (or for any of the five approaches for targeting) Resonate creates a
unique and specific set of online sites to act as the messaging platforms; combined with otheravailable attributes, over a 1,000 characteristics exist on which a campaign can be built. Culled
from the above example, Resonate could construct a usage profile for those who are Advocates
and above, and support gun ownership rights; that profile would be different from the online site
profile of those who are only Privately Involved and in support of a gun ownership rights. With
this information, messaging and calls to action are targeted expressly for the group who will see
it, leading to a more effective and efficient online campaign.
PrivatelyInvolved(minimaleffort/
commitment)
26%
ActivelyInvolved(moderateeffort/commitment)27%
Advocate(moderateeffort/highcommitment)14%
SuperAdvocate(higheffort/commitment)14%
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WHITE PAPER: REACHING INFLUENTIALS ONLINE
2010 Resonate Networks, Inc. 12010 Sunset Hills Road, Suite 410 Reston, VA 20190www.resonatenetworks.com
HIGHLY INDEXING SITES
Among Those Advocates and Super
Advocates Supporting Gun Ownership Rights
Among Those Privately Involved Supporting
Gun Ownership Rights
CNSNews The Glenn Beck Show
Human Events Online The Detroit News
MoneyNews.com International Herald Tribune
National Review MSN Yellow Pages
WorldNetDaily.com Cracked.com
In Closing
Communication is best when it is personal. Mass communication has always suffered from the
paradox of trying to be both individually personal and widely distributed. The Resonate
Advocacy Engagement Hierarchy allows far more personalized policy communications by
clustering respondent segments by issue position, demographics, history of engagement and
their actual usage of online sites. The methodology allows public affairs campaigns to
effectively target the right messages to the right people in the right places - especially enabling
access to influentials, often the most valuable resource for any campaign.
About Resonate Networks
Resonate Networks is the first online advertising platform based on Attitudinal Targeting--
enabling public affairs organizations, advocacy groups, non-profits, grassroots operations and
corporate advertisers to more effectively find their online audience. Attitudinal Targeting allows
advertisers to identify online audiences that share their position on key public policy issues, in
turn more effectively converting ad spending into desired audience action. Resonate provides
ad targeting and placement packages, including targeting analysis, ad buy strategy and ad
placement of display ads, banner ads, rich media and video. Resonate Networks is based in
Reston, Virginia.
For more information visit www.resonatenetworks.com.