Marketing has always involved an element of segmentation. Traditionally, defining segments and understanding them as types or clusters according to their needs, desires, age and location has helped marketers to understand how to target specific customer segments and how to build campaigns around them. However, when building customer experiences which have a digital component, it is important to understand how these segments behave online as well.
In 2007 Forrester released their Social Technographicsladder, which offered a means of understanding the way people behave when they use the web and social channels. This was developed as a set of profiles rather than segments, meaning that most of the groups overlap and that people participate in multiple behaviours. The ladder shows a range of behavioural profiles, such as ‘creators’ , people who create content blog and video content; ‘critics’, people who write reviews and participate in discussion online; through to ‘inactives’, people who use the web to mainly read and consume content and do not participate online. Unsurprisingly the percentages across each behavioural profile has changed over the years. Since Forrester first released this study, ‘creators’ made up 13% of the US online consumers; now this has grown to 24%. Equally, those who are ‘inactive’ in their behaviour have gone from 52% in 2006 to 14% in 2011. This is a significant decrease. It is clear that people are becoming increasingly involved with the content they consume across web and social platforms.
Building brand experiences which reflect online behaviour
So, people are getting more accustomed to participating with the content they consume. Surely, if participation is what people want and expect, then the real value in this is to look at these behavioural profiles and understand how to build experiences which match this behaviour. At G2, we carried out a study earlier this year called G2 eCultures, which investigated consumer behaviours, habits and perceptions of the digital world across six different European markets. This study successfully helped us build a more detailed understanding of how people behave in specific markets. Consumers are constantly evolving in the way they behave, the way they are adopting digital technology and what they expect from brands. By analysing consumers’ online behaviour in more detail, understanding their habits and using this thinking to inform the type of content we create on behalf of the brands we represent, we in turn have a better chance of building content and experiences which people really want from those brands.
Understanding segments so that we can create lasting brand relationships
It is all well and good defining a group of consumers who are likely to buy into a product or brand and then give that group a label that seems to reflect this, but does this tell us enough? Is it really helpful when we are looking to build experiences made up from a range of different content and platforms? There may well be people that perfectly match the kinds of characteristics marketing teams invest time in creating, but isn’t it time we question how useful and informative this is to us? While segmentation is a key part of any marketing activity, it is crucial that we evolve the way we understand our target segments and look at them from different perspectives. By doing this, we have a better chance of building the experiences people want and in turn learning how to create enduring relationships between brands and their consumers.
