Know-How Exchange : Research/Metrics

Erin,

First of all, it is impossible for your client to "target" everyone. That isn't a target. Targeting everyone is the same as targeting no one. Or if he is bent on targeting all humans, then he must have a budget of infinite dollars. If this is the case, hire a great big expensive research firm and your problems are solved!

Instead, work with your client to prioritize your target. Choose a smaller demographic.

By addressing this targeting issue, you save your client much more than just the sampling cost. You provide him with a lower cost marketing plan that will be more effective. Once you exploit your initial target, use profits to fund further research and marketing to other priority segments.

If this doesn't work, you will need to stratify your sample. You will have to define smaller buckets - like men, 25-34, 35-44, 45-54, 55-64. And then the same for women. You can do wider buckets too, but the downside is that population for each goes up and so does the sample size needed for significance. Given the population size, you can figure out the minimum number of people for each bucket at:

https://www.raosoft.com/samplesize.html

Keep sampling until you get the confidence level for the margin of error you need to make decisions. Trade off sampling budget for benefit of information. If you don't need 5% error because your actions are only 20% accurate, use 20% error. If you are "just guessing" about some other information, don't use 95% confidence interval - use 75%. This cuts your sampling cost.

I hope this helps.

Wayde

I believe the answer is to break the group down into smaller demographic groups then work out a seperate message for each group. A think mini targets rather than shooting for the elephant. I believe today there are enough low cost avenues to different segments that it can ultimately be more cost effective too.

Thanks so much for your response. You have offered me clarity and a good direction to take with this client. Breaking up his broad target audience into smaller groups is the way to go. Your answer was very helpful and I really appreciate it!