Understanding your target audience is a crucial aspect of market research and marketing. Your audience often expands beyond local boundaries to various global regions. By skillfully segmenting them by location and grasping their unique differences, you can significantly enhance the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.
In the second of our two-part series, we captured insight on just that! Troels Ringsted of The Mine Group shared how they leverage data to explore various audience segments and identify relevant media opportunities, ultimately informing marketing campaigns.
And be sure to check out the first interview piece, where he shared how to validate hunches with consumer intelligence!
How has market research helped you understand audiences internationally?
It has helped us notice unique perspectives segregated to specific areas or markets. For example, I did some exploratory communication research on truckers and trucking in the U.S. and discovered there was this love for truckers embedded in the culture. It included a trucker appreciation day, blogs that explored the love for truckers with talk of celebrating them, forums debating their national value and heritage, etc. These are the kind of things you find working your way through the network to inform your efforts in a specific region.
To illustrate Troels’ point about how conversations can vary depending on location, we have two scatterplots below focused on sustainability—one for the UK and another for the U.S.
In the UK, we have filtered the plot to display only discussions within local media. The topic “Eco-Friendly Shop” is generating considerable conversation. We can also observe that the subject of “Farmers, Farming, Climate” has substantial engagement and a relatively larger number of publications talking about it:
In the U.S., we see the same topic unfolds differently. “Carbon Neutral” and “Carbon Footprint” talking points will be more important here. Another important area is the “Country, Climate, Neutral” topic which explores the push for a national sustainability effort. Although it may not have as high a publication count, it still captures considerable attention and engagement.
How do you use NetBase Quid® to measure results?
We primarily use it to demonstrate growth within a niche, nationally and internationally. For example, we can perform brand tracking or sampling to show results. We explore how the brand was covered in media over X amount of time, and then we look at campaigns to see if it’s garnered much “earned” attention in that specific area. And if we know that it’s driving engagement, we can compare that to previous efforts.
NetBase Quid® allows us to show clients a digital footprint of their campaigns. We can argue, “You ran this campaign and were mentioned in all of this media, which was then republished into other media and reused for other stories.” It’s a clear correlation.
Take recycling, for example. Suppose you run a successful recycling campaign in your niche. In that case, you will notice that you suddenly occupy a large portion of the total recycling discussion—that you’ve significantly increased your share of voice in this space. And this is a really strong argument to show that we had a successful campaign.
Adding to this, we can also use sentiment analysis to show clients that a campaign in a specific area was beneficial or detrimental.
Do you see a lot of shifts in brand sentiment over time?
Yes, mainly for what I would call Big Hero brands—the kind that when there’s a shift, it’s usually a big crisis. And we use the Quid network a lot for that, to help locate or manage crises. What we see most often is that a brand will change perspectives on something, and initially, it’s presented as a positive in the media. But then someone will republish it in a negative light—and now that initial story is also seen as negative. It becomes a snowball effect where media amplifies the current public narrative.
These shifts can happen quickly and often blindside brands. Below, we see that the sentiment toward this prominent brand underwent a notable change, as indicated in red. Thanks to a visual representation of sentiment shifts as they happen, and the ability to drill down, brands can identify the specific triggers.
One can also set up alerts for real-time notifications when the shifts happen and as particular keywords, hashtags, or brand-specific terms are mentioned. This is key to preventing a potential crisis or miscommunication from escalating.
Can you share a campaign that should have been successful but wasn’t due to targeting?
I did a post-campaign analysis for a big quick-serve restaurant. The campaign didn’t work, and the brand was confused about why. Through Quid, I could identify that they were covered in many international media but hadn’t anchored their position in local media, which drives engagement. So, even though they had all these more prominent media outlets covering them, the local media had tons of attention from core audiences, which meant the wrong story was amplified.
I pinpointed this specific blog that started all the negative engagement and understood why things went south. With Quid, it’s not difficult to identify the local channels that are core to your topic. By doing this, the brand could have aligned with them, avoiding the whole mess.
NetBase Quid® simplifies the process of identifying top media types. The bar chart below shows stories sorted by country and colored by publication type. It helps analysts argue for a certain media type in Germany vs. the U.S., for example, based on the number of stories.
This insight is crucial, especially when expanding into new markets. It helps brands effectively align their efforts with the best media partners across different regions.
Do you see much spillover across international lines when it comes to trends?
The internet doesn’t have the same borders that we do. It’s not just U.S. media or UK media. More and more people consume content regardless of origin. And I think that’s accelerating due to influencers and streamers, etc. Consumers find outlets and people that align with their worldview and follow them, and this is beneficial from a marketing perspective. So, there’s transferable knowledge. You can often see something thriving in a niche, and it will spill over into the national media and even the international press.
An excellent example of this is sustainable tech. A few core blogs drive a lot of credible information, and those go across borders.
Do you have advice for those expanding their market research efforts across borders?
Know your internet. A lot of people from the UK will read things from the U.S. And a lot of people from Denmark will see stuff from the U.S. Will it resonate? You need to mix and match and have credible outlets from various regions to partner with, and then consider that there may be a global layer to your campaign as well, so have message variations ready to speak to those audiences.
Your market intelligence tool must be capable of detecting the subtle variations in worldwide conversations. Failing to do so could result in missing out on a critical element of your campaign strategy—one that you could have easily pinned down with a quick AI-powered search!
If you’re ready to expand your reach to audiences across different region, feel free to reach out to The Mine Group or Troels Ringsted for clarity and inspiration to inform your search. And be sure to request a demo of our platform to see a Quid analysis in action and sort out your next international success!