We are all very good at making assumptions. When it comes to marketing products whether online or offline, this can be a very costly mistake.

Don’t cut corners, take the time to get to know your target customer by researching potential customer demographics – it may just throw up some unexpected surprises.

There are some great FREE tools available to help you research demographics:

Microsoft adCenter Labs Audience Intelligence – Just enter a keyword, or a website address for a demographic overview. Visit adCenter Labs

Quantcast – Provide Marketers and Publishers with a worldwide measurement service. You can sign up for a free account here: Visit Quantcast.com

Alexa – Site demographics, Web Traffic Metrics, Hot URLs and more… Visit Alexa.com

MediaKits – Is there a magazine for your product/service? A lot of magazines have a link in the footer navigation bar on their website to a page or a downloadable PDF called ‘Media Kit’. Occassionally you may need to submit an email request for it. For example:

Golf.com promotes itself as the No. 1 site for golf enthusiasts, with approx 1.2m unique readers in 2008. The demographic information complied about its readers is:

•Mean Household Income: $94,059 •Male: 79%•Mean Age: 50•Married: 80%•Employed Full Time: 65%