Understanding the real audiences behind predicted trends

With the right tools and strategies, you can leverage audience intelligence and predicted trends to gain valuable insights into customer behavior and understand who’s really following the trend, and if it matters to your brand. 

This post will help you discover the power of audience intelligence, with a dive deep into one of the sample Pinterest trends from the company’s annual 2023 Pinterest Predict trend report. Using the Airy Style Trend, we will help you understand how to analyze trends using audience intelligence so you can develop an effective marketing strategy to stay ahead of your competition.

How to utilize audience intelligence for insights into trending behaviors

Audience intelligence provides incredibly valuable insights into consumer behavior, allowing you to understand current and target customers better and maximize marketing ROI. 

According to recent research by Nielsen, they looked across 15 brands and 82 campaigns, and it found that "audience-based reach metrics are a clear and proven indicator of outcome metrics (ROI and effectiveness)”. Basically, this means that understanding and validating audiences is imperative, so you don't waste money targeting the wrong ones and ensure you reap the rewards of serving the right audience.

When you’re looking for “the next big thing” or the hottest trend, you can begin by analyzing data gathered from online conversations, consumer surveys, and other sources to discover customer attitudes, interests, preferences, and more. Or you could gather intel on existing predictions and seek to validate them yourself using audience intelligence like Affinio.

For example, let's assess what Twitter audience insights can tell us about Pinterest-based predictions - and whether they seem ubiquitous or channel-specific. This information can help you adjust your marketing campaigns accordingly and make sure that your message is reaching the right people in the right way.

Pinterest is rapidly becoming one of the most popular social networks with over 400 million monthly active users. Utilizing Affinio’s audience intelligence can help you understand how to better reach Pinterest users and leverage generally trending topics within your campaigns. By actively analyzing passions, lookalikes, and interests across the Affinio platform, you can gain deep insights into current trends and potential topics for conversation that your target audiences are actually interested in.

Is the Airy Trend real, or just hot air?

Each year, Pinterest releases a much-anticipated “Pinterest Predicts” report. According to Pinterest:

People use Pinterest to plan for the future. That means we know what’s next. In fact, for the last three years, 80% of our report predictions came true. This isn't another year-end trend report. This is a not-yet-trending report—a window into the future, from the place where people go to plan it. This is Pinterest Predicts.

Under the Fashion Category of the report, the company predicts “Airy styles” fashion will be bigger than ever. It notes 2023 fashion will be filled with lace, tulle, ruffles and shimmer and “ethereal details for all, no matter how you identify.”

They note the style will encompass shimmery dresses, lace tops, long sleeves, tulle sleeves, ruffle shirts, and sheer pants outfits.

According to the company, this trend is a reaction to the long lockdowns that put fashion on the back burner. 

“After two years of sweatpants and loungewear, the focus is now on body-baring silhouettes—a fashion-forward moment of empowerment in turbulent times. Combining ethereal sensuality with the dreamlike quality of ballet, this trend is a gender-agnostic expression of femininity and strength,” it notes.

We were curious to see if there are signals to suggest this trend is emerging across the board and not just with Pinterest users and if so, to paint a deeper picture of this Airy crowd. Using Affinio, we studied these specific fashion descriptors to uncover five key personalities behind the buzz. 

If you’re a fashion brand or retailer, this process will help you learn the relevant demographics for this trend, the topics they discuss, where they consume content, and their other passions, so you can know where to invest ad spend and what to put in your creative. Once identified, you can even scale this targeting with passion-based lookalikes to really “let the air out” on your acquisition strategy.

Interestingly, Pinterest itself only appeared as a top organic interest among the ‘Marketplace Style Mavens’ personalities we uncovered who most epitomizes the trend. Yet using Twitter-based insights, we were still able to uncover other segments that were also discussing these same fashion terms.

The Airy Trend and Affinio - Know your audience inside and out

The first thing we notice upon researching The Airy Trend in Affinio is the demographics. Pinterest had predicted this trend will span across Boomers, Gen X, Millennials and Gen Z but is being driven by GenZ and Millennials - but is that the real story? 

As we can see from Affinio’s reporting, the demographics are heavily skewing female and female-identifying and most prominent in the 24 to 36-year-old range. Affinio demographics validate the Pinterest finding that although this trend may influence all generations, it is most predominant among the Gen Z and Millennial brackets. The age range and gender identity of the clusters help us know that it’s better to market this trend to Gen Z and Millennials first and foremost.

Also, one of the most important factors to review in these clusters is the affinities that bind them. This is extremely helpful to any fashion brand when they’re deciding which advertising channels to invest in. For the specific subgroup of ‘Marketplace Styles Mavens’, Etsy, eBay, Poshmark, and ShopMyCloset are all important e-tailers that marketers could advertise on to attract these personas.

In fact, the two main clusters (‘Pronoun Power’ and ‘Marketplace Style Mavens’) which contain about 60% of the audience for The Airy Style Trend, are both interested in fashion magazines, such as Vogue, Elle Magazine, Vanity Fair and the like. Each of those magazines offers opportunities for advertising online or in print, so this insight offers more evidence of where the best places are to showcase your brand and spend your marketing ad budget.

Know the niche you’re targeting

Once you’ve gathered the audience intelligence that can help you better understand consumer behavior, it’s time to use the data to pinpoint your target audience. Then, stay on top of Pinterest trends in your niche and use that information to tailor your content accordingly. Knowing what topics and keywords your ideal customers are engaging with will help you optimize your marketing strategy for maximum effectiveness.

Social media data can tell you a lot about your ideal customers, and Pinterest is no exception. Analyzing the interests of your target audience on Twitter by using Affinio to benchmark can help you figure out what kind of content and what other channel resonates with them. 

This will give you an idea not only of what topics are trending but also of which ones they're interested in right now. Once you have information on the channels, sites, and articles of interest, you’ll be able to tailor your content accordingly, ensuring that it has maximum impact and reach among the exact people you’re targeting.

Take advantage of social trends analysis

To gain further insights into customer preferences and behavior, validate hunches, trends, and predictions found on any network using Affinio. Even uncover segments you didn’t expect would be engaged in the process. This process can give you valuable insights into what audiences find appealing outside of just the trend being studied and how best to engage them.

By understanding buyer behavior and conversational intent at large, brands can identify or validate unmet customer needs and create meaningful experiences that meet their customers’ demands.