How To Help A Category Leader Extend Its Brand Into A New Emerging Category

Words by Known 's Isha A. , Zachary Spolar , and Lucia Di Bartolo

Known’s approach to segmentation can help category leaders identify white space even within a crowded market.

At Known , we work with some of the biggest brands in the world. And while they are often at the forefront of innovation, they don’t overlook the basics and are constantly exploring new channels and opportunities to expand their reach and effectiveness for more of their consumers. Over the last few years, we’ve had the opportunity to help one such tech brand think about how they could expand and make their mark in the automotive space.

They came to us with clear objectives: They needed a deep understanding of the various attitudes, motivations, and behaviors that define different types of car drivers, which, in turn, could help inform product and feature development, and future messaging. And their goals dovetailed perfectly with our belief system: The first step is to know your consumers (habits and practices, consumer journey, etc.), and one useful tool among many, is to segment your consumers.

At the core of every decision, segmentation is a powerful tool that every brand should leverage to truly understand the different consumers they serve––from how you talk to specific consumer groups to how you design with them in mind.

Start from scratch.

Even if you have a solid idea of who your existing consumers are, if you’re looking to provide them with a new offering, you need to think about your segments from the ground up. How consumers may use your current products could be wildly different from how they’ll use a new one you plan to introduce. For our client expanding into the automotive space, we had to strip away any preconceived notions of what consumers may have wanted from them in this category. As a result, the first piece of our segmentation was understanding how people differ at the intersection of driving and technology. In order to figure that out, we deployed our Human Insights team to talk to real people to get their feedback. Requiring deep thinking and strategic planning, our qualitative research approach helped to ensure we would hear the most honest and raw human data––their true feelings and desires, rather than just their surface thoughts or brush off answers.?

Build segments thoughtfully and intentionally.

Empowered by our deep understanding of real drivers from our qualitative research, we delved into quantitative surveys to understand the picture at large. We collected data from consumers on everything from their driving habits and technology preferences, to their attitudes, hopes, and fears to create statistical models to bucket people into distinct and meaningful segments that take consumers holistically into account, rather than only looking at driving and technology.?

For this particular client, we identified five key segments, each being highly actionable to support and drive their strategic goals in the coming years. Typically, this part of the process results in many possible options. We approached this process thoughtfully and intentionally, taking care to consider what made the most sense given who would be using the segmentation, and why. Our clients also partnered with us every step of the process. By the time we landed on the final segments, there were no surprises, and they were fully bought in.?

Actionability and Impact

A good segmentation, like this one, will reverberate across nearly every decision that goes into a product and brand. In this case:?

• Targeting: In a mass of consumers, uncovering who the low hanging fruit is versus who will require more convincing is helpful, but knowing the why and what drives them is the greatest gift to galvanize and inspire teams. For example, one consumer who is an early adopter of all things tech is an obvious target, but another with a more nuanced relationship with tech is entirely another. An example of this could be a parent with the sole purpose of entertaining their kids in the backseat so they can have 5 minutes of quiet.
• Functionality prioritization: Knowing which features, and more specifically which aspects of features, consumers use differently is critical in shaping an effective product development strategy. Take for example a split screen on a car dashboard––to one consumer, this could be useful to enable their productivity, while another sees it as a way to get more out of their drive from an entertainment perspective through music or calling etc. While different, knowing both against who you plan to target can make a world of difference.
• Messaging: The key to creating your segments is to humanize them. They aren’t just data points—they’re actual human beings who will ideally resonate with your messaging. But only by true understanding of what motivates them individually can you tailor your language to each target. It’s equally important to know what you should and should definitely not say to each. In one example, a consumer who seeks a connected and high-tech driving experience will relate to different messaging than someone who fears distraction and prefers their car to have the fewest bells and whistles possible.

?A marketer and product engineer walk into a bar…?

Time and time again, clients will often come to us with work from a previous agency and say, “They made this beautiful deck, but we don't really know what to do with these segments,” or “My marketing team is finding this really useful, but I have a team of developers and this doesn't connect to them at all.”

We believe segmentation is nothing unless it is actionable across teams and can be used for their unique goals and strategies.

In other words, it should be versatile enough to support both the current marketing efforts and useful to still be relevant for at least another year of product development. (Depending on the category, you may want to review your segments sooner than that.) For our tech client, we went one step further to create a 360-experience by producing a 15-minute mock podcast to present our work as if they were listening to it in their car. Not only was it a good challenge to have to sum up our work so succinctly, but it also allowed us to present it to the client in an unconventional way that matched the assignment. Our work—and our ability to deliver it in a way that multiple teams could benefit—proved crucial to how this client chose to develop in this space. And that’s the power of strong segmentation: They’re still using our data today to inform critical efforts across the new business vertical. When you nail the segmentation step of any strategy, you’ll no doubt see the positive effects across all future planning.

To learn more about how Known's Strategy team can help your brand, get in touch!

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