resonate - reaching influentials online

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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.