• by India White , Columnist, November 11, 2016

Today’s consumers are bombarded with content. Are they noticing it? They may be seeing it, but do they take note? 

The old ways are no longer relevant.

Creating target personas based on demographics, psychographics, outdated survey data, and gut instincts are over. Traditional persona-driven campaigns have given marketing a reputation for being irrelevant, repetitive, and annoying. With ad blocking on the rise and consumers becoming more and more ad-averse, they are sending a clear message that marketers are ignoring. People are more complex than ever before. In today’s market where consumers have more options and resources, new methods for consumer intelligence are taking precedence. To place the focus on consumers, they must be understood as people. 

Moving Beyond Demographics

To do this, brands require an in-depth understanding of their audience. Beyond demographics and psychographics, brands need to understand the culture of their consumers and what makes them tick. The same creative and messaging won’t resonate with everyone. How can brands make personal connections with people in a way that is effective, repeatable, and scalable?

Defining your target audience as “new moms” is not acceptable anymore. Within these broad categories, there are many interest-based segments that better define what consumers care about most — the key to reaching and engaging people.

In this case study, we’ll look at a CPG brand to understand the different types of moms that exist in their audience and understand how the brand would relate to each segment differently.

Case Study: Moms Within a Peanut Butter Brand Audience

To understand this audience, we ran an interest-based segmentation analysis using interest-based segmentation to define the different clusters who love a popular natural peanut butter brand. 

After analyzing their audience, we were able to identify six unique interest-based communities: Entertainment News Fanatics, Foodies, Fitness Competitors, Vegan Runners, U.S. Pop Culture, and Couponers. Each of these communities contains people who self-describe as Mom. For this example, we’ll concentrate on Foodies and Vegan Runners. 

While these communities share a passion for food, their interest in food is entirely different. Let’s explore the culture of these communities and how the brand could engage and relate to each community.

What they are passionate about.

By running interest-based segmentation analysis, we can see the most contextually relevant interests to each community. This allows us to get a better sense of what these individuals truly care about. 

In the Foodie community, their top interests include Serious Eats, Bon Appetit, SAVEUR Magazine, New York Time Food & Drink, HuffPost Food, HuffPost Taste, Food Network, Foodista, Slow Food USA, and Eatocracy. 

Top influencers for the Foodie community include Amanda Hesser from “Food 52” (a food and recipe blog), Melissa Clark (food writer), Jaden (professional recipe developer, cookbook author, and tv chef), and Giada De Laurentiis (celebrity chef).

In the Vegan Runners community, their top interests include Larabar, Vega, FitFluential, OhSheGlows, Runner’s World, Clif Bar & Company, Whole Foods, Bob’s Red Mill, Chobani, and VegNews Magazine. 

Top influencers for the Vegan Runner community include: Angela Liddon (vegan cookbook author), Tina from “Carrots ’n’ Cake” (food and fitness blog), Monica from “Run Eat Repeat” (healthy lifestyle blog), and Julie from “Peanut Butter Finger” (a health and fitness blog).

The Foodies are most interested in information sources that educate them on new recipes and places to enjoy the tastiest food. The Vegan Runners are most interested in the products and information sources that support their healthy lifestyle. These sources can be used to reach these communities by placing personalized advertising in their favorite magazines or engaging their most-trusted influencers.

How they self-describe.

Foodies’ top self-descriptors include food, lover, blogger, cooking, chef, recipes, mom, life, healthy, and eat. While the Vegan Runners use these top terms: runner, vegan, lover, fitness, food, blogger, health, life, healthy, and mom. 

We knew that these two communities share a passion for food, we now know that they also share an interest in living a healthy lifestyle. What sets them apart is their interest in food. Foodies are most interested in cooking healthy, tasty food while vegan runners are most interested in how healthy, vegan food choices can power their active lifestyle.

The content they engage with.

Another way to understand the culture of these communities is to understand the content that already resonates with them.

Foodies’ top topics of conversation include #Fall, #Recipe, #NationalCoffeeDay, #GlutenFree, #Food, #Healthy, #Chocolate, #Dessert, #Breakfast, #Dinner. 

While Vegan Runners are discussing #Vegan #GlutenFree, #Running, #Healthy, #Fitness, #RunChat, #Health, #Workout, #Nutrition, and #Coffee.

Again, we see that the Foodies are looking for new recipes and delicious food, while the Vegan Runners are sharing content on a healthy, active lifestyle. Monitoring these topics and including them in branded content shows that your brand knows what matters most to your customers.

These interest-based insights reveal what audience segments are most passionate about, allowing the brand to take an audience-first approach to reaching, engaging, and connecting with their ideal audience. 

Interest-based segmentation data empowers marketers to identify ideal audience segments and understand their culture, what makes these communities tick. This allows marketers to move away from mass marketing and get back to marketing to people, not personas.