Extracting valuable insights using audience segmentation

Every brand strives to know their audience better so they can reach out to them in a way that resonates. So mass targeting is usually out of the question. Instead, they’ll turn to things like personalisation or demographics-based targeting, which may not be sustainable or even accurate in the first place.

Audience segmentation offers a good balance between accuracy and efficiency, allowing brands to extract valuable insights to understand and address the needs of their audiences.

During the SI Tech Demo Day 2021, David Boyle from Audience Strategies talked about the power of audience segmentation based on his experience working with pop stars, politicians, and luxury brands.

The issue with mass targeting, personalisation, and demographics

David explained that personalisation, demographics, and mass audiences don’t work.

Brands may lean toward personalisation because it’s highly accurate and precise. However, it’s also strategically inefficient to think about everybody as an individual because it’s time-consuming and overwhelming.

On the other hand, mass targeting is efficient and simple because you’re only looking at the audience for a brand as a whole. But it’s not accurate because you may be sending out the same message to a bunch of people with very different needs and pain points. So it’s going to leave you with huge wastage.

A compromise between the two is demographic targeting, which is also very inaccurate. Think of the common comparison between Prince Charles and Ozzy Osbourne . While they share the same demographics, they’re very different people with starkly different needs. You can’t just lump them together and target them or analyze their behavior and opinions.

The solution to these problems is needs-based audience segments, which involve grouping audiences according to similar needs. It’s efficient and simple to understand. And it’s also strategic, precise, and representative of the total audience.

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Discovering future growth opportunities through segmentation

To help us understand the value of audience segmentation a bit better, David gave us a real-life example of his experience working with David Guetta. The artist had tremendous success at the start but his growth eventually slowed down.

Based on an analysis of David Guetta’s audience, they noticed that the growth had come almost entirely from the “Nighthawks” segment. These are people for whom music is really about the night out and the night life. And his growth in that segment was maxed out.

They then identified two other segments from which the artist’s future growth will come – “Pop Idols” and “Casuals.” These are people for whom music is all about fun and everyday listening, more casual instead of active listening. So the artist immediately targeted these segments with the right music and the right partnerships. Sure enough, this resulted in a huge boost in growth for David Guetta.

From a club DJ, he grew into a global pop superstar. And his growth was clarified, enhanced, focused, and planned using audience segments.

Other musical artists have also used the same strategy to boost their growth. For Katy Perry, she needed to shift her focus from “Pop Idols” to “Cutting Edge,” which is all about credibility and authenticity. This resulted in “Katy Perry Unplugged.”

Pink Floyd already had the “Cutting Edge,” but needed to reach the “Collectors,” who wanted more physical and scarcer things they could touch and feel related to the band. This resulted in a massive and elaborate box set from the band.

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Increasing efficiency with the right platforms

While needs-based segmentation may seem like an expensive process, you don’t have to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on it if you have the right platform. You can use technology to find the people you’re really talking about in a highly efficient manner. That means you won’t need to rely on an agency to conduct boring surveys and wait months to get the results.