Dive into your customers’ lifestyles to understand their motivations & maximize ROI. See how segmentation can benefit your food & beverage brand.

What is Lifestyle Segmentation Marketing? | Union

What is Lifestyle Segmentation Marketing – and How Does it Help You Sell Food & Beverage Products?

<p>Picture your brand’s ideal customer. Do you think of them in terms of age, gender or location? You’re not alone. Historically, these labels were how food &amp; beverage brands defined their target audiences. However, as our ability to leverage data to better understand customer buying behavior improves, brands can go beyond traditional demographics and segment their audience by their actual lifestyles. And they’re using these audiences to improve campaign performance and grow their return on investment. <br /></p>

<p>Unlike traditional demographics (standard categories like age, location, occupation, education level, etc.), lifestyle segmentation delves deeper into the customer psyche. With lifestyle segmentation marketing (LSM), audiences are organized by their preferences, hobbies, wants, needs, likes or dislikes. </p>
<p>These data points provide brands with a deeper understanding of their customer base. They allow <a href="https://union.co/industries/food-beverage">F&amp;B brands</a> to identify the specific buyer profiles and personalities (out of a broader target demographic) that are more likely to engage with a product, <a href="https://union.co/services/data-brand-strategy/brand-identity-messaging">interact with a marketing message</a> and convert into a paying customer. </p>
<p>There are several different ways that your brand can segment your audience by lifestyle, including: </p>
<ul><li><h3>Hobbies/activities/passions </h3></li></ul>
<p>What motivates your audience? What do they do to unwind? How do they spend their free time? What are their passions? Segment your audience, then determine how your product can provide additional value to make their hobby or activity more rewarding. </p>
<ul><li><h3>Community involvement/activism</h3></li></ul>
<p>How active is your audience in their community? What social causes and nonprofits do they support? Figure out what your audience cares about, then work with your marketing team to find opportunities to authentically support these causes. </p>
<ul><li><h3>Social life/events</h3></li></ul>
<p>Are your customers more introverted? Party people? Or are they a mix of both? Determine commonalities and social interests so you know how to message to your audience. </p>
<ul><li><h3>Wellness/personal care/self-development </h3></li></ul>
<p>Do your customers value personal growth? Do they have a passion for self-care? Segment your target audience by aspiration, then create content that aligns with those personal goals. <br /></p>

<p>What is lifestyle segmentation marketing?</p>

<p>Now that we’ve broken down LSM, here’s why you should apply it to your marketing strategy. </p>
<h2>Informing impactful creative</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.mdgadvertising.com/marketing-insights/infographics/its-all-about-the-images-infographic/">Images on Facebook receive 352%</a> more engagement than standard text-only posts. Strong visual creative is the driving force behind high-performing ads. </p>
<p>But, not just any image will do. The more an image resonates with its audience, the more likely that audience is to engage with that ad. Use your ad creative as a channel to convey that you understand the lifestyle of your target audience. Are they dog people? Select creative that features the family pet. Outdoor enthusiasts? Tap into your audience’s passion for fishing and hunting. </p>
<h2>Identifying high-performing ad placement</h2>
<p>LSM doesn’t just help enhance the impact of your creative, it can also help you identify the optimum placements for your marketing messages. Leverage your understanding of your customer’s lifestyle to select the websites, publications and media your target audience is most likely to consume – thus reducing ad waste and improving performance. </p>
<p>Get even more out of your LSM efforts by using third- and first-party data sets to define custom audiences built around your customers’ lifestyles. You can learn more about how Union uses LSM, machine learning and artificial intelligence to drive programmatic ad performance <a href="https://union.co/services/performance-media/programmatic">here</a>.</p>
<h2>Designing an elevated customer experience </h2>
<p>A successful LSM strategy can improve more than just your marketing campaigns. It can elevate your entire customer experience. From product design and innovation to distribution and delivery, with LSM, you can create a rich experience that touches consumers physically and emotionally across their entire customer journey. </p>
<p>By having a full understanding of your customers’ motivations, you can create, develop and package a unique and consistent experience that consumers will seek out.<br /></p>

<p>3 ways lifestyle segmentation marketing can help you sell your food &amp; beverage products</p>

<p>Go beyond a one-dimensional understanding of your F&amp;B brand’s target customer. Put yourself in your customers’ shoes and work to understand what they value in their day-to-day lives. Then <a href="https://union.co/services/performance-media">build your marketing campaigns</a> around those values. Showing that you know your target audience can help you forge deeper connections with your customers. Which, in turn, can lead to more sales, revenue and profit.</p>

<p>Looking for more insight on how LSM can help drive your food and beverage sales to new heights? <a href="https://union.co/contact">Let’s talk</a>.</p>

<p>Start leveraging LSM today</p>

<p>Union is a creative &amp; performance marketing agency that creates omni-channel campaigns, unleashing creativity on a data-driven world, helping brands produce memorable, measurable and repeatable results. Obsessed with data-driven performance, we believe every marketing dollar should be viewed as an investment. Our clients expect a meaningful return and we prove the ROI of our work with quantifiable data. </p>

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