Small agencies are on fire right now. Big named brands are switching from their big named agency to work with smaller shops.
Häagen-Dazs left their agency partner to work with the 9 person shop, nice&frank. Panda Express did the same when they switched to Opinionated, a team of 23.
But working for big named clients is no easy feat. They expect the work to be better, done faster, and for a fraction of the cost.
This is why small agencies need to be able to automate a lot of their processes.
The one we’re going to discuss today is arguably the most important - audience segmentation.
Audience segmentation is the starting point to any winning campaign or client strategy, and we’re going to show you how to automate this process with Audiense, and how to use it effectively.
But first let’s review why audience segmentation is so important.
You can’t market to an audience that isn’t segmented
Audience segmentation takes your client’s audience and divides it out into smaller groups based on shared characteristics and behaviors.
By segmenting your clients audience, your small agency can create buyer personas for each group and tailor ads to their specific interests and behaviors.
This approach boosts engagement, increases clicks, and ultimately drives more purchases for your client. It creates a win-win situation because as your clients do better, so does your agency.
However, manual audience segmentation is time-consuming, costly, and often inaccurate. So what’s a small agency to do? Follow these steps and we’ll show you how to automate this process effectively with Audiense.
Step 1: Collecting and importing audience data
The first step in audience segmentation is collecting audience data. You can’t segment an audience without an audience list and information about each audience member.
As a small agency, you need to gather your client’s audience data quickly and efficiently, without needing direct access to their first-party data or CRM systems.
In some cases, if you are lucky you will have access to your client’s first party data typically organized in their CRM system, or in the format of past customer survey results.
Their first-party data could be sales data, it could be emails, addresses, past purchase behavior etc.
But it is extremely rare that your agency will have access to this information, especially with GDPR privacy laws. And even if you did, it's very hard without a data-analysis tool to make sense of it.
Automated audience collection
Enter an audience intelligence tool like Audiense that automatically collects audience social data for you. Building reports that collect data on any audience is now a breeze. All you have to do on your side is select your client’s brand and determine how many segments you want to divide their audience into.
On the off chance you do have access to raw first-party data, there is always the option to upload it into the Audiense platform and let the tool do the rest.
See it in action
Here is a video of this process taking place within the Audiense platform. You’ll see that it’s as easy as typing in your client’s name (social handle), and choosing how many segments you want their audience divided out into, and Audiense does the rest.
In this example we are segmenting the entire Panda Express audience into 8 smaller segments:
Try out segmenting your own audience automatically.
Step 2: Segmenting the audience
When segmenting an audience, you need to choose the criteria by which you will divide the audience members. Some people gravitate towards bucketing audience members based on similar purchase behavior or demographics, but this isn’t an effective strategy—it doesn’t tell us who the person is or what they love.
Instead, Audiense segments audience members by their shared interests using AI and machine learning. Why do we do this? Because interests tell a story about who each segment is. Interests should be considered when building marketing content and strategies that are going to resonate because they speak to what an audience is most passionate about. It’s as simple as that.
What keeps you reading an article, watching an ad, and staying on a webpage, something that peaks your interest and something you can relate to.
In the case of the Panda Express audience, these members have been segmented out based on their shared interests.
You have a cluster defined by their shared love for family and travel, one cluster that shares a love for music, and another that are complete fast food enthusiasts (a nice word for addicts) - it’s obvious they shouldn’t all be treated the same, in a marketing sense.
One is going to be motivated to buy because they love the music you chose for the ad, while another is going to resonate with a commercial that demonstrates strong family values, for example.
But before we can ideate the perfect campaigns we still have a lot to learn about each segment, and that brings us to Step 3.
Step 3: Getting to know each segment within the audience
Now for the fun part — getting to know each segment.
Audiense makes segment analysis so easy. Within every Audiense report there is demographic data, socioeconomics, interests, influencer, brand and media preferences, personality data, buying mindsets, and online habits (don’t worry we’ll review all of these below).
All of this data together forms a 360 degree picture of that segment.
As a small agency, when diving into the Panda Express “Gaming & Streaming” segment, here’s what you’ll learn about that segment when navigating through an Audiense report.
Demographics
In this section you will get an idea for the average gender and age of this segment, as well as a list of the cities they live in, languages they speak and how they themselves would describe who they are. You’ll start to form a mental image of this segment in your head.
While you never want to segment an audience based solely on demographic data, it’s still valuable to review this information as part of your audience analysis.
Socioeconomics
Here’s where you can do a deep dive into insights on this audience's education level, income level, and family status. You can learn what jobs they do, if they are in a relationship or not, and what their political views are.
This “Gaming & Streaming” cluster now adds a bit more color to your demographic intel. You can picture a man in his early thirties, who lives in Chicago. He’s college educated, he works in an Administrative role, he’s married with kids, and takes home an income of $50-$75K.
Top influencer and brand
This section gives you insight into who has the most influence over your audience segment, in terms of brands and influencers.
For example, people like gamer “Ninja” and sports host “Stephen A. Smith” are followed, looked up to, and listened to by this audience. This section is perfect for finding an influencer to work with on your client’s next campaign.
Influencers can also indicate who this audience admires and tries to emulate, which tells us more about who they are on a deeper level. Brand interests can indicate who your client’s greatest competitors are or which brands would be the best collaborators.
Interest categories
This section provides a great snapshot into the types of broader interests your segment has.
Beyond games, this “Gaming & Streaming” segment loves playing the guitar, is interested in Astrology and likes reading books.
While it might not be immediately obvious how you’ll use this information, it’s valuable to have in your back pocket. For example, you might suggest that your client, Panda Express, incorporates astrology into a new promotion or ad they’re creating.
This section really does start to give you the sense of what they love, and what should be considered when creating marketing material for them, if you want it to really resonate.
These insights impress clients who might have a good demographic or socioeconomic sense of who their customer is but likely don’t know them on a more personal level through their interests.
Media Affinities
The Media Affinity tab shows the top media channels that are used, watched and loved by your audience.
This includes TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, blogs, apps, online shows, events, and places (shops, museums, restaurants etc).
This section tells us that our “Gaming & Streaming” segment like reading the Barstool Sports blog, and ESPN Stats, and they frequent the GameStop website.
This tab helps with media buying and selecting the right media channels to advertise to this segment. For example, to reach this segment, you would advertise on the GameStop website.
Applying this type of data can give you a higher ROI on your media spend, which your clients will love.
Content
This section of the Audiense report summarizes your audience's top liked and shared content. It shows what links they are sharing, the keywords they are using, the most popular social posts for this audience, and even the top emojis they use.
This section can really hint at what is trending amongst this audience right now. Currently this audience is liking Post Malone’s new music, and the show “The Boys” is trending.
A client like Panda Express will always want to know what is trending amongst their audience, and this section will help you inform a stellar social media strategy as well.
Personality insights
This neat little section is powered by IBM Watson and provides information about your segment's personality.
There are two main buckets of information:
- The Big Five personality types, which are Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism, that together form the acronym OCEAN. These five traits represent broad domains of human behaviour and account for differences in both personality and decision making.
- What drives them. This area includes your segments:
- Needs – aka the aspects of a product that is likely to resonate with the audience
- Values – aka the motivation factors that influence their decision-making
Without even meeting or interviewing this audience, you will know their deepest needs, values and desires.
When it comes to this “Gaming & Streaming” cluster Audiense tells us that they are “excitable, analytical, and active”, “they feel their desires strongly and are easily tempted by them”, they are also self conscious and modest.
Their choices are driven by a need for revelry, and they value success and living life to the fullest.
You can use these insights in any number of ways because it really does strip this segment down to their core. The more you tap into their needs and values, the more they will resonate with your marketing and the brand itself.
Buying mindset
Here’s where you will get a look at consumer behavior and what influences this segment to make a purchase.
This segment is influenced by brand names, and social media posts, and targeted ads are the way to go here.
Online habits
How a segment acts online can inspire what your client publishes online, and where.
This tab summarizes the devices they use, the top networks they visit, and how likely they are to engage with different types of posts.
Twitch and Reddit would be a good place for Panda Express to have a presence, and spend ad dollars on.
Going through all these sections demonstrates just how detailed and deep Audiense insights are. Now you have a complete picture of who each segment is, on the surface and right down deep to the core of their needs and values.
Step 4: Applying what you’ve learned
All of these insights mean nothing if they aren’t applied to your marketing strategy.
Small agencies who currently use Audiense apply the insights to content creation, influencer identification, brand collaborations, product production, ad copy and creative, media buying - just about anything and everything they create for their client’s audience is directed by Audiense insights.
And when they do this, they always notice a difference, because the ads perform better, and the content resonates with the audience segment their targeting.
This is exactly the case for our small agency client Convosphere, and their client MAPFRE.
Convosphere and MAPFRE segmentation case study
MAPFRE is a global insurance leader, dominating the Spanish market and holding significant positions in Latin America and Europe. With over 34,000 employees, the company generated nearly 32.23 billion euros in revenue in 2023 alone.
MAPFRE was faced with the challenge of moving away from generic mass broadcasting, which was ineffective, to a more personalized approach. They needed a replicable methodology to understand and engage their diverse customer base.
Partnering with Convosphere, MAPFRE implemented a three-stage methodology:
- Audience Identification and Segmentation: Focusing on Millennials in Pennsylvania, MAPFRE identified six segments based on gender and marital status using Audiense’s social consumer segmentation. Brandwatch tracked the conversations of these groups over six months.
- Profiling: Each segment was profiled by their unique traits, needs, values, and online behaviors. Brandwatch identified the most relevant topics for each segment.
- Audience Activation and Messaging: The insights helped create tailored messages and images for each segment, enhancing relevance and engagement.
After three months, personalized messages and segmented audiences led to higher engagement on Facebook and X, reduced CPC and CPE, and similar conversion rates between personalized and non-personalized messages. MAPFRE plans to continue using personalized messaging for niche audiences to boost engagement and brand awareness, while using broader messages for general promotions.
Here’s a look at the segments Audiense unearthed, and a summary of insights on each one, used to target each segment effectively and successfully:
Step 5: Always be segmenting
Small agencies that use Audiense notice a massive improvement in their campaigns and marketing strategies right away, but the effects are even greater when Audience segments are updated regularly (which is easy to do when you can instantly run an Audiense report anytime).
It’s important to be using the most recent and accurate insights, as we know people's preferences and interests change all the time.
This is why Audiense is preferred over focus groups, and other market research forms whose insights are only fresh and accurate for a small window of time.
As an Audiense user, you’ll notice that over time new segments will emerge that will need to be marketed to and your client’s audience will look alot different year after year, even month after month.
Audiense makes it easy to view those differences, and always be segmenting your clients' audience.
Going forward
With Audiense, it has never been easier or faster to segment an audience, and beyond that the Audiense platform paints a complete picture of who each segment is at their core - a marketers dream.
Now your small agency can create winning marketing strategies and campaigns just as fast as your big named clients expect, and at a fraction of the cost.
Sign up to try Audiense and segment/understand any client’s audience instantly.
