Inside Strategic Segmentation Blog Series – Part Five
Prioritizing Action Steps Within Each Segment: TURF or Next Best Move
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Written by Chris Diener, Senior Vice President, Analytics
Once you’ve completed your segmentation study, you should not only have a clear understanding of your segments but also the specific decisions and actions the insights will inform across your product and marketing organization. In the previous post, we discussed how to design and leverage your segmentation survey to reach the right people with the right messages. But how do you actually distill and prioritize the right combination of actions to maximize your success with each segment?
Here in part 5 of our series, we discuss a common pitfall that companies often face when they go to implement a segmentation strategy: failing to prioritize the correct action steps or messaging within each segment.
Once you know which products and services to market to each of your target segments, and what messages will resonate overall, the final analytic step is to prioritize specific messaging and content you need to deliver to be most effective.
Prioritizing segments to maximize impact
Too often we see segmentation studies that fall flat because they don’t go beyond the initial segment profiles and insights, when in fact, this is when the most valuable work begins.
To maximize the impact of segmentation, you first need to prioritize each of your segments. To do so, focus on elements of value and opportunity such as brand fit and appeal, attitudinal alignment and perceptual alignment, as well as economic opportunity (segment size, spend amount and frequency, breadth of usage occasions, etc.). Each segment should be indexed based on these elements.
Once you have that nailed, you need to address the key questions that will ultimately shape your strategy:
What combination of messages and marketing offers connects best with each segment?
What is the optimal product lineup and messaging mix to reach the largest population of that segment?
What subset of products, services, or experiences provides the highest ROI, and allows you to best focus your efforts?
To answer these questions and others, you need to apply a variety of analytical techniques to dig deeper to understand what specific combination of products, services, and messages you need to prioritize within each segment.
For example, let’s say you want to identify the three most important product benefits or messages from a list of ten that resonate with a segment. On the surface that sounds simple. But how a group of consumers weighs the importance of features is not the same as coming up with the right combination of features and messages to maximize demand or reach across that segment. While two of the messages may appeal mostly to the same people, a broader reach or coverage within the segment may occur by swapping out one message for another or presenting a different combination of features.
Blog series at a glance:
- Part 1 – Aligning your segmentation approach with strategic priorities
- Part 2 – The Importance of making segmentation immediately actionable
- Part 3 – Strawman planning and hypothesis generation to maximize segmentation impact
- Part 4 – The ability to reach the segments differentially or accurately
- Part 5 – Prioritizing action steps within each segment: TURF or Next Best Move (this post)
TURF analysis
By employing a TURF analysis (Total Unduplicated Reach Frequency), you can gauge both the appeal and reach (i.e. willingness to buy) to find the right combination of products, features, or messages to maximize impact within each segment. In a TURF analysis “reach” can have multiple meanings depending on the underlying data on which the analysis is run. Typically “reach” means maximizing the number of buyers who would be highly likely to buy at least one item in a set or bundle. If a given set of items has more people who would be very likely to buy at least one of the items in that set than another set, it has a higher “reach”.
The key output of a TURF analysis shows which items, in combination, will create the greatest “demand” reach. It also shows, as in the figure above, how the incremental reach decreases as more items are added to the combination.
For example, in a segmentation study for a gaming brand, a TURF analysis allowed us to determine which specific set of messages would appeal most to gamers. One segment, interested in the social aspects of gaming would generally be marketed differently from one very intent on character progress. Ultimately the best mix of messages included both elements of within-game messaging and ways to share out experiences in the game.
Next Best Move Analysis
Another approach to narrow down and improve communication with target segments is to conduct a Next Best Move (NBM) analysis. NBM considers multiple different actions that could be taken with a specific customer to determine the best set of moves to maximize impact. Similar to an Agent-Based-Simulation, NBM treats the information context of each survey respondent individually, while taking current brand performance and perceptions into account. So, barring any large systematic shift in brand perceptions, or how people value brand messages, the results will accurately inform your marketing priorities and immediate next steps.
By applying NBM analysis, you can narrow down your messaging or communication to only those items with which you can actually motivate market change. For instance, there are likely some areas that are important to your brand where you are already strongly positioned. You may not be able to move the needle on the segment’s perceptions in that area, but the items’ importance suggests it may be an opportunity for competitive differentiation, especially when combined with other key areas the segment values where you can improve perception.
NBM analysis begins first with identifying which messages are most impactful and then uses simulation to find out which combination of messages will effectively have the greatest impact in the segment. The NBM approach allows the marketing team to formulate a plan and analytics approach to surface the most relevant content, message, and offers to customers, using the right channels.
The chart above illustrates a difference between how action items would be prioritized with a simple importance rating analysis versus simulating the next best change impact on the likelihood to take an action. Importance ratings alone would put the focus on Item2 instead of Item6.
The main point, by illustrating these approaches to deeper (second-level) analysis of segments, is to demonstrate that much can be done to expand the value of a segmentation AFTER the segments have been identified.
The TURF and NBM analyses can be potentially executed with the same data on which the segmentation was conducted. From the same survey data. Of course, with a proper typing tool, future surveys can be done among these segments and more analysis can be applied, such as conjoint/choice modeling or MaxDiff analysis. These further survey efforts can be very valuable in defining how to best approach each segment with product offerings or communications.
Recap and key takeaways:
To recap our 5-part series, there are a number of important areas brands need to get right to ensure their segmentation success and avoid painful mistakes:
Align segmentation efforts to specific strategic priorities. In part one of our series, we discuss how to create a framework for your segmentation project that prioritizes the right objectives.
Make sure the segmentation is immediately actionable. In part two of our series, we discuss how you can apply the “3 in 3” rule to ensure high-priority application and adoption across your organization.
Conduct an upfront strawman planning session to generate your hypotheses. In part three of our series, we discuss the importance of stakeholder alignment and how to source and apply better data based on the hypotheses or goals of your segmentation project.
Develop a strategic approach to reach your segments differentially and accurately. In part four of our series, we discuss how to ensure targetability and reach with each target segment across both your above-the-line and below-the-line marketing.
Prioritize action steps within each segment to maximize marketing ROI. In this post, we discussed how to apply TURF or Next Best Move analysis to avoid the pitfall of low traction or marketing ROI with segments and ensure the correct message and elements are prioritized within each segment
