The key to understanding audience intelligence is uncovering insights into what makes them tick. What keeps your audiences up at night? What are their values? What makes them laugh? Crucially, what keeps them thinking about you and your brand.

Unlocking these insights is a vital process in creating campaigns, products, ads and content that truly connect, drive engagement and hit brand goals.

‍

Why demographics alone aren’t enough 

At a surface level, knowing your audience could come down to a few key factors: age, spending power, location and gender.

But let’s consider two British men. Both were born in the 1940s, grew up in England, are wealthy, and have children. Based on these demographic similarities, you might assume they have a lot in common. But the two men in question? King Charles and Ozzy Osbourne. On paper, they share the same age, gender, and nationality, but their lifestyles, values, interests, and behaviours couldn’t be more varied! Can you imagine Ozzy looking for saddle wax for his favourite polo steed? Or King Charles earnestly looking into fabulously gothic-themed home decor? 

This example highlights why demographics alone are never enough. The data available to social media marketers needs piecing together from various sources. That’s where our Insights Team can help provide you with clear insights and direction. 

‍

Building a winning strategy

In today’s crowded social media landscape, grabbing and holding an audience’s attention span is a constant survival of the fittest. 

Understanding your audience is crucial to building a successful social media strategy. It can help you compete for customers’ limited attention, increase sales and achieve your goals. This may sound like a simple task, but it needs to be carefully considered. 

Social media platforms often only offer basic demographic data natively. This can provide a valuable starting point for a brand looking to understand its audience, but it’s only one piece of the puzzle.

Gaining true audience intelligence goes beyond demographics, providing a holistic view of target audiences. It answers the crucial questions that demographics alone can't.

Using social listening tools and consumer research platforms, such as GWI, brands can go beyond surface-level data, unlocking a deeper understanding of their audiences - including their perceptions, how they act, and why they make the decisions they do. This is something we bake into our day-to-day work at Battenhall, providing deeper analysis that can inform the creation of social media personas and drive long-term value. 

‍

Battenhall Insights 

In 2024 we launched specialist Insights and Innovation teams to develop our audience intelligence services and provide brands with a well-rounded understanding of their core target audience. We approach this in three steps:

1. Discovery: we collaborate closely with clients to gain a deep understanding of specific business challenges and behavioural barriers their target audiences face.  This involves: 

• Demographic segmentation: outward-facing attributes of a person such as age, gender or marital status. It’s a useful method when looking for a top-level view. 
• Behavioural segmentation: the actions people take. This could be their social media usage, or more granular actions they take on specific channels. 
• Psychographic or attitudinal segmentation: these provide clues into audiences’ wider perceptions, topics of interests, and mindsets. It could be why they like or dislike certain brands, their lifestyle choices, or values.
  

2. Build segments: we start by identifying key segment drivers before analysing all potential influences on those drivers. If we find data gaps, we conduct primary research – surveys, interviews, or focus groups – to understand the underlying behaviours and decisions.

3. Identify and analyse: once armed with these factors, we analyse audiences with data from our in-house tools, such as GWI, a powerful research tool for consumer research.

Social media personas

The culmination of this in-depth audience intelligence is the creation of detailed social media personas. These personas represent your ideal customers, bringing your target audience to life and providing a clear framework for all your social media efforts. They serve as a constant reminder of who you’re trying to reach and what matters most to them and will be vital to your strategy.

In short, audience intelligence is not just a nice-to-have – it’s a must-have for any brand looking to thrive in the competitive world of social media. It will help set your social media strategy, drive engagement, increase conversions, and ultimately, should achieve your business objectives.

Check out our range of Insights services and get in touch – hello@battenhall.com – if you’re looking for help!

‍