How do you DO segmentations?

It’s a question we (Brand:Lab) and I get asked a lot.

What’s the Brand:Lab way?

My response: Until I know more about your situation, it depends.

Firstly, how will you use the segmentation when we deliver it?

What’s the fundamental business challenge? What you will do with the clever analysis informs a lot from the outset and sets the frame for everything we do. Are we focusing on a single brand? A portfolio? Who is funding the study and why?

Often people don’t truly know this to the level of detail we need so that often leads to a great first discussion/learning session.

Secondly, what have you done before?

Even if it didn’t work or was never used. What other information do you have available that you can append to the data? This is important because linking something theoretical to real-world sales/commercial data is so powerful (and makes everything actionable!).

I love these discussions a lot, thinking about the external data that can be appended to segments.

Thirdly, from a dimensions perspective, it depends on your category and on the drivers of choice.

So we run an analysis and generate a hypothesis around how this plays out in your category. This informs the crux of the approach (aka the age-old needs/occasions vs attitudes vs demographics) too.

Lastly, activation.

The strategy bit. aka make choices and build plans. This helps set future activity from an acquisition, marketing, and branding perspective.

In short, there is quite a bit to consider and no black box. But that’s a good thing.

After all, having a strong segmentation is designed to give you an edge (and what works for you won’t necessarily work for others, even your closest competitors).

We’re hosting a segmentation summit in late Summer (late August/September) in London. It’ll be a great event. In-person too. It’ll be an open discussion around segmentation, we’ll share some of our thinking too, but it’ll be more discursive than the agency talking for 3 hours fear not. We’ll feed you too!

Drop Richard Heath, Hannah Rogers, or I a direct message (client side folks only) if you’d like to be involved, or more generally if you’d like to discuss segmentations.

Mat Sloan

Head, Brand:lab

2023-07-20T10:14:15+00:00
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