Place advertising tailored to target groups

Eyecare advertising relies heavily on traditional media such as television and print. This is a shame – and short-sighted, because those who continue to invest their advertising spend primarily in traditional reach providers are accepting high wastage and missing out on huge sales potential. Today, many consumers can be reached via social media. In this article, Cornelia Lamberty, Managing Director of moccamedia Trier, shows how you can not only generate attention, but also guide customers towards a purchase.

More and more people are using social networks to find out about companies’ products and services. If you want to be perceived as a provider, you need to be present here. However, a purely editorial social media presence with regular posts is not enough to achieve reach and reach the right target group. Only the use of a media budget makes social media truly attractive as a medium for sales. Target groups can be addressed very precisely here, i.e. almost without wastage, and therefore cost-effectively. Further arguments in favor of social media advertising are the comprehensive measurability of its performance and the speed with which you can readjust or react to current developments based on the measurements. Another major plus point for an industry such as opticians, which continues to generate most of its sales in bricks-and-mortar stores, is the fine-grained local targeting of advertising on the social web, which makes it possible to direct consumers specifically to the local point of sale, i.e. the optician’s store in their vicinity, by playing advertising precisely to target group members in a defined radius around a point of sale.

Digital spends are the key

All of this sounds like an ideal advertising channel for the optician industry. However, a look at their current advertising behavior shows that very little advertising money has flowed into social media to date. Relevant market surveys provide insights into both the distribution of advertising money and the media usage behavior of the target groups relevant to the optician industry. Data from the market research institute Nielsen and the largest German market media study, Best for Planning, provide some interesting insights: In 2023, the optician industry invested around 96.5 million euros in advertising measures. By far the largest share of this expenditure was spent on television advertising (44%), followed by digital media (17%) and print campaigns (15%). Radio (10 percent), commercials (8 percent) and out-of-home (6 percent) share the bottom places. Although the eyecare industry has a huge customer potential to address due to the high number of people with defective vision across all age groups, it would be a fallacy to deduce from this that exposure to traditional mass media such as TV and print will lead to an optimal target group approach. People’s media usage behavior has long since become so differentiated that certain target groups can no longer be reached via these media. This applies in particular to the younger and very young age groups, who mainly obtain information digitally and use streaming services instead of linear television. Their advertising must therefore be targeted digitally – and this is a huge opportunity for the optician industry.

Different target groups, different media usage behavior

The Best-for-Planning 2023 II market media study provides information on three consumer groups that are relevant for opticians: Spectacle wearers, contact lens users and sunglass buyers. These target groups are not always clearly defined and naturally overlap to some extent, but the study shows how many people in which age groups can best be reached via which channels. Spectacle wearers are by far the largest and most diverse optician target group in terms of age. According to the study, they have a stronger affinity to television, print and radio media in relation to the overall population. In contrast, the target group of contact lens wearers is significantly smaller and younger and has a strong preference for digital channels and social media. However, this target group also has an above-average preference for video streaming. Best-for-Planning attests to a similar media usage profile for sunglasses buyers: Compared to spectacle buyers, they are significantly younger and, like contact lens buyers, make above-average use of digital media, but at the same time show a strong affinity for print media. The customer potential of the optician sector is therefore split into several sub-target groups with different media usage. This rules out the possibility of a “one-fits-all” strategy being sufficient for a targeted advertising approach. Focusing solely on social media advertising would therefore be just as ineffective as the industry’s previous focus on TV advertising. Instead, what is needed is a media mix orchestrated for specific target groups, in which social media should play a key role for certain target groups.

Targeted customer approach through social networks

Target groups also need a differentiated approach in terms of content, tailored to the customer journey, i.e. the consumer’s decision-making process up to the point of purchase. This calls for messages that are tailored to the progression of the decision-making process, and not just in the form of paid advertising. It is important that users are directed to further editorial content on the topics addressed via advertising. Generally speaking, awareness of an offer is raised at the beginning of the customer journey. The consumer takes notice of the product or service for the first time, often in connection with an existing need or an unconscious desire. The aim of companies must therefore be to generate this attention and focus it on themselves and their own offers. If the actual purchase is to be made in a brick-and-mortar store, specialist media agencies develop a sophisticated media strategy: a media mix that builds on one another generates targeted attention in the vicinity of the points of sale, taking into account the customer journey, and directs advertising in such a way that it points to the POS in the vicinity of the user.

Integrating advertising and information

The local retailer is a crucial component. This must not only be clearly visible to potential customers via advertising material: an up-to-date and technically clean website with fast loading times and landing pages that can be used quickly and reliably with content tailored to a campaign are just as important for a trustworthy and competent impression as an attractive price and transparent information. This is because the Internet presence presents the company in the same way as the physical sales outlet and serves to direct interested parties from the Internet into the analog world. In any case, it makes sense to continuously maintain your own web presence with a view to advertising behavior. An intelligent service link to the online area, such as reserving glasses in a store, is also attractive to customers. Another focus should be on direct contact with the local location without media discontinuity in order to increase commitment: this can include, for example, a call (click-to-call), direct interactive communication such as a WhatsApp chat for a consultation via the website or a digital calendar to directly arrange appointments for a vision measurement.

Good requirement work is important

This clearly shows that acquiring potential customers via social media is not something you can just run off with: As with any marketing measure, preparatory work is essential for profitable results. It is important to identify the social channels on which the respective target group can be addressed. While Facebook has declining user numbers with an older age structure (around 25 million monthly active users in Germany), Instagram, Tiktok, Snapchat or Twitch are more suitable for addressing a younger target group. As a general rule, it always makes sense to use a combination of several social media channels with an affinity for the target group, because not all members of the same target group automatically have the same social media usage habits.

The media mix makes the difference

A media mix of online and offline advertising media significantly increases consumer awareness in the targeted areas and creates targeted, highly effective touchpoints. In the case of analog advertising, too, the advertising pressure can be directed very specifically and with laser precision to the immediate catchment area around the location. This kind of hyperlocal fine-tuning can only succeed if professionally designed campaigns are precisely controlled down to street level so that local sales outlets do not overlap with their target area and advertising outside the target area is not visible.

Conclusion: Targeting, i.e. concentrating on the interested user who is receptive to the sender’s messages at that moment, is fundamental. And not only in traditional e-commerce, but also and especially at the jumping-off point from digital pre-information, such as through social media, to stationary sales. As in other sectors, preliminary information is also becoming more digital for eyewear products and a differentiated approach tailored to the various target groups and their media usage is necessary. The online customer journey must therefore be accompanied by the digital visibility of the local contact person. There is great potential here that needs to be leveraged.

Text by Cornelia Lamberty.

Photo: Adobe Stock / owen

First published in opticundvision Edition 6/2024