An expert is someone with knowledge, experience, and passion who seeks advice on what to buy and where to buy it. Not all experts are created equal; they can have different levels of strength and reach.
A target audience is a group of experts identified as likely advocates of a business. They are defined based on common characteristics, such as demographics and behaviors. It's best practice to engage your target audiences at least once per quarter on ExpertVoice.
What is an audience on ExpertVoice
Our audience comprises over 850K trusted experts that consumers turn to for buying advice. Our community members, respected for their expertise, are 22 times more likely to give buying reviews than the typical consumer. Moreover, every member within our private network is rigorously vetted and credentialed by our in-house team.
We segment our audience into three separate groups. Experts could fall into one, some, or all of these groups based on their team(s).
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Industry Professionals: This verified expert is knowledgeable about a brand and a category. An example includes a local mountain bike organization instructor who knows a lot about bikes and might use various bike gear from many brands. See another example here.
- Retail Sales Associates: This verified expert is knowledgeable about a brand and a category and works in a retail location. An example includes a bike store manager who engages with and purchases from specific brands on ExpertVoice and recommends them in-store. See another example here.
- Enthusiasts: This verified expert is enthusiastic about a specific category and raves about it to others but may have limited strength and reach. An example includes a member of a local mountain bike organization who pays for benefits, including group rides, ExpertVoice access, and educational MTB resources. See another example here.
Credentialing
Our in-house credentialing team validates members’ teams and expertise, guaranteeing a trustworthy and authentic membership. Credentials are verified continuously, ensuring everyone on our platform is always a qualifying member.
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Verification techniques: We verify experts through manual and automated methods, depending on the team.
- Manual: Includes evaluation of IDs, recent pay stubs, and membership cards.
- Automated: We employ email domain checks, cross-referencing with employee or organization feeds, and brand endorsements via referral or team codes.
- Commitment to excellence: About 10% of applications are declined, underscoring our dedication to quality and the rigorous standards set by our credentialing team.
- Fraud Prevention: To prevent any abuse, we have multiple security provisions in place: credential renewal protocols (all teams expire after a set period of time), third-party software monitoring (using Sift to ensure bad actors are promptly identified and managed), and manual account auditing.
Targeting
Audience targeting helps you show your campaigns to the right experts you care about. Targeting means giving us a relatively strict set of parameters to work within while finding the best target audience to show your campaign to. Your ExpertVoice target audience can be a combination of saved audiences you have previously targeted on ExpertVoice or a new audience you define with your Account Executive.
Experts are real people with real jobs and interests. Often, their team and interests might overlap, but they do not always. For example, an expert might be an Army veteran who works as a store manager for a specialty outdoor retailer and enters barbecue competitions on weekends. The ExpertVoice platform allows you to target broadly or narrowly based on these teams and interests.
Here are some questions to consider when determining what target audience you'd like to create:
- What are your business goals?
- What types of experts would you like to reach first?
- Do you want to reach a broad expert audience or a smaller, more personal audience?
- How will you build a long-term relationship with your audience?
The Audience Library
The Audience Library in Libraries is a collection of the audiences most important to your brand and outlined in your ExpertVoice Solution. View the audiences currently targeted or not targeted in your brand's campaigns in the library.
Request a new custom audience
To target a new audience for an upcoming campaign:
- Contact your Customer Success partner at least three weeks before your campaign launch and specify your desired audience's characteristics, demographics, and passions.
- ExpertVoice will create the audience for you and share it for review.
- After you approve the audience, it will appear in the Audience Library of the Advocacy Platform.
How many experts should you target?
You can take two general approaches to creating a target audience: specific and broad. Neither type of targeting is inherently superior to the other. Your chosen approach depends on what you're trying to accomplish and what you're available.
For example, you can target specific expert teams, such as the International Mountain Biking Association, or target broader industry categories, such as the Bike and Outdoor Categories. If you’d like, you can further refine your audience based on the geographic location they shared in their expert profile.
Coordinate with your Account Executive to determine the optimal number of experts to target.
Note: In the Advocacy Platform, estimated audience sizes are provided, but they may change over time due to ongoing expert verification and affiliation updates.
Manage audiences in a campaign
You can launch multiple campaigns to the same audience or the same campaign to multiple audiences. Audiences can also be added to or removed from select campaigns. Learn more about how to manage audiences in a campaign here.
Archive or unarchive audiences
In the Audience Library, hide audiences irrelevant to your brand if you'd like. To do so, click the three dots next to an audience and select archive to store it in the Archived Audiences tab.
To unarchive an audience, visit the Archived Audiences tab, click the three dots next to the audience, and select Unarchive. This will instantly restore it to your Current Audiences.