Make the most of Google+

A new way to segment your audience and send targeted messages

Google+ (Google Plus) may be brand new, but with the large early adoption rate and great features, it’s only a matter of time before this social sharing platform is adopted by brands and businesses. As a brand builder and marketer, the Circles feature in Google+ suddenly becomes very attractive. With Circles it’s not only super easy to categorize your followers (or audience), you now have a great way to target specific segments of your audience with custom messages.

Just like your custom email groups in Emma, Google Circles lets you apply the same logic to your followers.

For example, if you’re an online retailer and you have some data on who is following you, consider breaking up your followers by location, customer type, size or “age” (that is, when they became a customer).

Now, if sales are lagging in the Southeast, hit that Circle up with a coupon that’s only visible to them. Want to keep your largest customers happy? Send their Circle a quick note of thanks. Maybe you have a Circle of customers that only purchase a specific type of widget. You can send them industry news that the rest of your followers may not care much about.

The advantages here are pretty clear. There’s less worry about bombarding your entire list of followers with information that may only be applicable to 10% of them. Your messages will be more relevant because you know exactly who your target audience is.

While Google admits that they still have some work to do for businesses to have a presence on Google+, what we’ve seen so far is promising. Word on the internet says other services like Google Analytics will be hooked up soon, as well.

The future is bright for audience segmentation and relevancy. Sign up for Google+ if you haven’t already, and explore what it has to offer. And let us know the unique ways you’re using it.