SMM - CB Implications

Social Media Marketing, 3e©
OB CONSIDERATIONS IN
SMM AND IMPLICATIONS
FOR STP
Chapters 2-3

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
Why do social media marketers need to understand the behavior of
consumer segments? What are the bases of segmentation used to
group consumers?
What are the individual influences on buyer behavior in a social media
context?
 What are the elements of social identity? How do individuals build their social
identities? How are these identities relevant to marketers?
 How can we explain the motives for participation in social media activities? What
attitudes are most relevant for our understanding of social consumer behavior?
 What are the most important segments of social media consumers? What do they
tell us about targeting users of the social Web?
How do group/social community influences impact the spread of
information and buyer behavior?
2-2

WHAT IS
MARKET
SEGMENTATION?
Market
segmentation is
the process of
dividing a market
into distinct
groups that have
common needs
and 1-3
TCC BY-NC-ND

WHY SEGMENT
MARKETS?
Market segmentation
is a strategic tradeoff
between the efficiency
of treating everyone
the same and the
effectiveness of
treating everyone
differently.

STP
Segmentation is the first step in a model known as STP –
Segmentation, Targeting, and Positioning.
We segment markets either from a “demand-side” or “supply-side” to
enable more efficient and effective marketing strategies.
Demand-side means that we segment markets for acquisition – what
are the characteristics of segments we should target for customer
acquisition?
Supply-side means that we have current customers who can be
targeted for retention and increased customer lifetime value – who
are those customers and what do they need?
Once we perform the segmentation procedure, we use the targeting
procedure to select the segments to target.

SEGMENTATION PROCEDURES
1. Identify the objectives of the segmentation (acquisition or retention
and specific organizational challenge being faced)
2. Based on objectives, select the segmentation bases and specific
variables to use in the analysis. Any variable can be used if it is
relevant and data exists for use in the analysis.
 Note that segmentation analyses are meant to be data-based, but many are based
on secondary research, logic and intuition instead.
 You may return to the data time and time again as the marketing objectives shift.
For instance, you may start with variables designed to identify groups with the
highest probability of purchase but then further segment those groups on “jobs to
be done,” “channel preferences,” and personality characteristics to gain insight for
targeting of sub-segments.
3. Run statistical analysis such as cluster analysis to identify
segments (and possibly predictive modeling of segment behaviors
and preferences)

BASES OF SEGMENTATION
Geographic
Demographic
Psychographic
Benefit
Behavioral
2-7

SEGMENTATION BASES AND
VARIABLES
The 5 bases of segmentation represent many/most of the possible
variables of use in segmentation analyses.
The challenge is to identify the variables that will really MATTER for
the marketing decisions at hand. With the exception of “benefits
sought,” which is really “jobs to be done” the variables do not explain
what people want or why. They are proxies. Be sure the variables
deliver information that relates to the decisions you need to make.
For instance, does it matter if people are in urban or rural locations?
It may not. Or it may if you might be selecting media for promotion
(such as use of billboards or television advertising in major markets)
or are concerned about the costs of shipping for the channel of
distribution.
Even if some variables are not key for the clusters produced, they
may still offer valuable information for later use in developing a
meaningful buyer persona.

TARGETING
Once segments are identified, the marketer must select which
segments to target. Not all segments will be selected because they
may not be a good fit for the marketer and/or because every
company has limited resources with which to target markets.
Choose the segments that are most attractive and have the best fit
with the brand. Attractive segments are relatively large, identifiable,
reachable, unique, and durable.
For the segments chosen for targeting, further study of data will be
used to produce a persona of each target segment and possibly also
a buyer journey. These are then used to guide marketing decisions.
A persona is like a character sketch of a typical unit in the target
segment. They are used in both B2B and B2C situations.

FIGURE 2.2
BUYER
PERSONAS

PERSONAS
Personas could include information on many characteristics and
ultimately be enormous reports on the segment. For instance, recent
research on Centennial buyers from Kantar Media are large
documents. These will not be valuable if people on the marketing
team don’t read the reports and remember the information.
Therefore, the personas as a 1-page document are invaluable for
highlighting the most important information about the target
segment and the information most relevant for the marketing
decisions at hand.
But remember personas are only as good as the segmentation data
used and the decisions of which segments to target.
For social media marketing, personas will include data on uses of
social media (such as preferred channels, devices used, motives for
use) but will also include information on other variables too (e.g.,
brand affinity, need pain points, shopping patterns).

WHAT CAN WE LEARN ABOUT OUR
TARGETS?
To build personas, consider the characteristics of the segment that
could influence their buying decisions and your marketing decisions.
If it might matter, study it/include it in the persona.
Some specific areas of social media behavior that might matter for
SMM campaigns are daily use patterns for social media, motives for
participating in social media, privacy boundaries preferred, types of
social media behavior, and influencers and influence communities.

FIGURE 2.3 A DAY IN THE
SOCIAL LIFE

MOTIVES FOR SOCIAL MEDIA
ACTIVITIES
Affinity
1
Personal utility
2
Contact, comfort
& immediacy
3
Altruism
4
Curiosity
5
Validation
6

FIGURE 2.5 SOCIAL SHARING
BOUNDARIES

SOCIAL
MEDIA
SEGMENTA
TION
MODELS
Social Technographics
The Social Consumption/Creation Matrix
A Typology of Social Utility
Pew’s Internet Technology Types
Microblog User Types

FIGURE 2.6 FORRESTER’S SOCIAL
TECHNOGRAPHICS

FIGURE 2.7 SOCIAL CONSUMPTION/
CREATION

FIGURE 2.8 A TYPOLOGY OF
SOCIAL UTILITY

TABLE 2.1 PEW INTERNET
TECHNOLOGY TYPES

WHICH TO USE?
Any or all of these models may be relevant in creating personas for
SMM campaign planning. It depends.
This is part of the strategic planning challenge. It’s a puzzle to figure
out. The answers (best insights) won’t always be obvious – in fact,
they probably will not be obvious.

SOCIAL COMMUNITY INFLUENCES
In chapter 3, the focus is on community and group influences.
We know from the study of buyer behavior that people are influenced
not only by their own characteristics, attitudes, and behaviors but
also by those of important others.
Important others include real and aspirational reference groups and
these encompass the “others” we are exposed to on social media.
Be sure to review the characteristics of the social communities that
may be relevant for influencing your target segments (e.g., presence
of “influencers” aka opinion leaders) as well as impact your marketing
effectiveness (e.g., whether your social content can be amplified with
sharing, whether a community culture fits with your brand’s
personality and mission).

THE
VOCABULAR
Y OF
NETWORKS
Nodes
Network units
Interactions
Flows

CHARACTERISTICS OF ONLINE
COMMUNITIES
1
Presenc
e
2
Social
objects
3
Behavio
r
standar
ds
4
Groups
& sub-
cultures
5
Particip
a-tion
6
Social
capital
7
Strong &
weak
ties

CHARACTERISTICS AFFECT
MARKETING
Presence – how must you present the brand in the community (if chosen)?
Social object – does the social object in a community fit with the brand and
brand communications?
Behavior standards – what does the brand need to know about how to
behave in the community to fit in as a member? Or does the brand want to
be in this community given the behavioral culture standards (e.g., we see
fewer brands choosing to engage on reddit and 4chan, possibly because of
behavior standards)?
Groups & subcultures – what groups exist in the community that are relevant
and what is their form and source of influence?
Participation – what does engagement mean in the community? How will that
impact what the brand could plan as engagement opportunities for SMM
campaigns?
Social capital (as well as weak/strong ties) – what are the sources of social
capital? Who has high capital? What opportunities exist to leverage these
influencers for “affinity transference” and/or the network effect to achieve
message amplification (and possibly even viral spread and meme status)?

SOCIAL
OBJECT
THEORYSocial object theory basically
says that most communities
organize around some shared
object of interest (or passion
even). This is true on and
offline.
On Dogster, dogs are the social
objects. On Insta, photos. On
Twitter, tweets. On Pinterest,
images. On YouTube, videos.
Note that some objects are
TYPES and some are SUBJECTS
(dogs versus images).
To succeed in a community, the
brand will need to provide
valuable content that speaks to
the social object embraced by 3-26

INFLUENCE
RS
ARE
SOCIAL
MEDIA’S
OPINION
LEADERS
Reward power
Coercive power
Legitimate power
Referent power
Expert power
Informative power

INFLUENCER MARKETING
It’s definitely a current trend for brands to use social influencers for
marketing campaigns.
Why?
1. Influencers have relatively large audiences (meets reach
objectives).
2. Influencer audiences tend to be engaged which may result in more
attention paid to brand messages as well as spread of those
messages node to node, network to network (called the network
effect, produces “flow” of information, results in “amplification” which
is essentially word-of-mouth communication in social media).
3. Influencers often times create the content for brand relationships
and do so much more efficiently than ad agencies.

FLOW AND
THE
INFLUENCE
NETWORK

FIGURE 3.2
ARCHETYPE
S OF SOCIAL
MEDIA
INFLUENCER
S

UP NEXT
Now that we understand how to identify target markets and personify
them and understand the individual and group influences on their
behavior (with special emphasis on the elements unique to social
media), we are in a position to move forward with strategic planning
for the campaign.
In future chapters, we’ll cover specific steps in the planning process,
the practical tasks that must be completed to develop a plan for
execution, and the marketing possibilities across the four zones of
social media.

SMM - CB Implications

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