As consumer behavior continues to rapidly evolve, it’s critical for businesses to stay ahead of the curve. Understanding who the customers (and future customers) are, how to position the brand, and where to reach these consumers is key. This isn’t always easy to accomplish, but implementing a segmentation and audience strategy is essential for maximizing brand growth.
When a segmentation and audience strategy are designed it’s critical to keep the end in mind. How will this information be used in the long run? Will you have everything you need to identify your target consumer, understand how to position the brand, and ultimately reach them via media outlets?
Creating an Actionable Segmentation
While demographics and behavioral components are a key piece to any segmentation, more is often needed to really define and understand the key audiences. Often, segments are pulled together by their shared attitudes, expectations, and needs, relying on demographics more for profiling. Understanding and planning for this in advance is critical to successfully understanding and defining your target audiences.
Taking it a Step Further
Again, thinking with the end in mind, the ultimate goal of any organization is to efficiently and effectively reach their target audiences where they’re at with appealing messages. It can often be challenging to translate a traditional segmentation into media strategies given the different data ecosystems. But by integrating online behaviors into the segmentation design and engaging Big Village’s Audience Intelligence platform on the back end, we can create a bridge between identifying a key segment and activating against them.
Combining the power of these two tools – segmentation and Audience Intelligence – allows brands to fully understand who their target audiences are, what makes them tick, and where to find them. Thus, allowing their media to work harder and reach the intended audiences more efficiently.
Optimization and Evolution
Successful brands know that all good strategies must evolve over time. As audience strategies are rolled out, it’s critical for brands to evaluate progress via measurement systems (i.e., brand tracking) to keep tabs on performance. This approach allows brands to monitor progress, but more importantly use the insights to optimize the strategy going forward.
This type of strategic, multi-source approach empowers brands to craft actionable segments, enhance media strategies to reach the intended audiences, and optimize for the future success of their brand.
Written by Lindsay Vanek, Senior Director.