Why audience intelligence is crucial for small agency success

Do you remember Blockbuster? It seems funny now, with access to any movie you could ever want at your fingertips, that you used to drive to a store where you had to physically pick up the movie you wanted to watch. Then you would drive home, watch it and return it the next week. 

Blockbuster, for so many people and their families, was a Friday night ritual, a date night or just a fun movie night with friends. This is why the company has been so successful for 30 years. 

Then Netflix came along and Blockbuster was out. 

Netflix changed everything. They were the pioneers of using audience intelligence to their advantage. They would analyze your viewing habits and recommend movies you would like. Their continuous data-driven approach made Netflix more and more addictive to the viewer. Too addictive it seems, as they are now worth over 278 billion dollars. 

You might be wondering where we’re going with this.

Netflix’s story illustrates the power of audience intelligence and how it leads to significant competitive advantages and market leadership. This applies to all companies that use audience intelligence and data-driven strategies, seeing a 5-8 times higher return on investment than those who don’t.

For small agencies, audience intelligence is crucial for success. Without it, your small agency could become the next Blockbuster. With it, your small agency can become like Netflix. This blog post explains why.

Audience intelligence explained 

Audience intelligence is the analysis of an audience’s preferences, behaviors, and interests. Companies use these insights to create ads that resonate, attract website visitors, and make their products so addictive they become immensely successful like Netflix.

Effective audience intelligence combines psychographic, behavioral, and sentiment data to get a full 360-degree view of the audience. For example, two 31-year-old females in Canada might have very different interests—one loves horror films, the other comedy. Insights from these interests and behaviors are far more valuable than mere demographic data.

So how does one acquire audience intelligence? They use audience intelligence tools.

Audience intelligence platforms are a lot like market research groups in the sense that their purpose is to get to know an audience at a much deeper level. The difference is that market research takes lots of time and money and by the time the “insights” are surfaced, they could be old data - we know how quickly people can change. 

Audience intelligence platforms are instant. They give you the power to do hundreds of market research projects within a single day - with data and insights coming back in seconds. The power of these platforms is so imperative to small agency success.

Let’s explore all their benefits. 

The benefits of audience intelligence for small agencies 

Winning the pitch

Imagine winning any prospective client by wowing them with audience insights in your pitch. Audience intelligence makes this possible through audience discovery, allowing you to get up close and personal with your client’s audience.

Simply type in the audience you wish to explore and instantly understand the segments that make up that audience. 

Client’s will always have an idea of who their target audience is, but a lot of times they might be missing one or two key segments that can be found when you use audience intelligence tools. 

If you can surface who those segments are right off the bat in the pitching phase they know your agency is going to bring value. 

Audience intelligence tools make it easy to dive into an audience and instantly understand: 

The audience breakdown: 

(You can’t target an audience without segmenting it first - as you can see each Segment needs to be advertised to differently). Client’s love this visual (an audience segmented out into different clusters) and they always learn something new about their audience when you show it to them 

The demographics that make up that audience segment

It’s important to know where this audience resides, what languages they speak, and other information that can be used to build out this audience to be targeted in any social ads platform. 

Socioeconomic insights: 

Are they college educated, are they married, what income are they bringing in? This is all information you can find within this section and prove to the prospective client that you already know these details about their audience. 

Top influencers and brands: 

Being able to show that you know who holds the most influence over a client’s audience is key in the pitching phase - it shows the client you are ready to hit the ground running on any influencer campaigns. 

Interest categories: 

What an audience is interested in is forever changing, and client’s want to see that you always have your finger on the pulse when it comes to knowing what makes their audience tick. 

Top media channels:

Remember from above when we said that companies that use audience intelligence and data-driven strategies see a 5-8 times higher ROI. The same goes when those insights are applied to media planning. Proving to the prospective client that you are going to get a high ROI on their ad spend is encouraging - they know the decisions you are making marketing wise are all backed by data. 

Content insights:

Showing what’s going to work or not work in terms of targeting your clients audience on social media is key. They know any social strategy you propose is based on these insights and are therefore guaranteed to resonate with their audience. 

Personality insights: 

These insights show that you really do know the client’s audience on a deeper level in terms of their values and needs. Its insights like these that not only direct marketing related decisions but many other business decisions as well - which will get your client leaning in. 

Buying behavior: 

Selling more products or services is probably the overarching goal of each one of your client’s, so it helps to know what motivates an audience to buy. 

All of these insights, when surfaced and placed in a pitch deck, pack a punch. They wow the client and win you more business because of it.  

Data-backed marketing strategies 

Audience intelligence not only looks great in a pitch deck but also helps build winning marketing strategies. By creating a 360-degree view of the customer, small agencies can tailor and personalize each campaign. This leads to: 

• Campaigns that resonate
• Better allocation of marketing resources
• Higher effectiveness of paid ads (since you know when and where to place the ads to get in front of the audience.) 

Relevance is a small agency who is a perfect example of an agency who has used audience intelligence to create winning, data-backed marketing strategies. Read this case study to learn how they used audience intelligence to target and acquire a group of high-net worth individuals for their client. 

Deep client understanding

The greatest risk to any small agency is churn. If every month you can be providing your clients with insights like the ones above, you prove time and again that you are a partner that brings value. 

Audience intelligence reveals new trends that can be shared with clients for actionable insights. These insights might inspire them to create new product lines. Additionally, a quick competitive analysis can identify audience groups that competitors have captured, highlighting areas where your client should increase their marketing efforts.

Audience intelligence doesn’t only make for good marketing strategies. When passed on to your client they help build winning business strategies as well. And as long as you can be viewed as a valuable business partner - your clients won’t churn and your small agency will continue to grow.

Getting started 

For an agency who hasn’t worked with an audience intelligence tool before, it can be overwhelming to try and understand which instances it should be used in.

The short answer is audience intelligence tools can be used for every single marketing function; from audience identification, campaign creation, influencer selection, and campaign tracking.

*Above are some more examples of the use cases for audience intelligence tools. 

Here’s how to get started using audience intelligence tools:

1. Identify Use Cases: Audience intelligence tools can be used for audience identification, campaign creation, influencer selection, and campaign tracking.
2. Choose the Right Tool: Use our guide to find the right tool for your team. Audiense, for example, is popular among small agencies for its ease of use and rich insights.
3. Integrate and Use Daily: Ensure your team uses the tool daily for each marketing task or project. The more you use it, the more you’ll rely on data-backed decisions and insights.

Don’t get left behind

Agencies not harnessing audience intelligence risk becoming obsolete, like Blockbuster. Audience intelligence tools are evolving, with AI and machine learning driving deeper insights and hyper-personalized marketing strategies. The longer you wait, the further behind you'll fall.

We encourage you to try Audiense - the success of your small agency depends on it.