Social Media Audience Analysis — “Fusalp x Chloé” use case
Study background
A few months ago, I had the opportunity to spend a day with my wife in Chamonix, France, which does not happen very often given our working schedule. At that moment the country was not in a lockdown, so we were able to spend some time walking around the village and discover various luxury and sport-related boutiques that Chamonix is famous for. One conversation leading to another, my wife informs me that Fusalp, one of the oldest French brands specialized in high-end winter-sports clothing, had collaborated with another luxury brand, Chloé, and released a limited skiwear capsule for Winter 2020–21.
This collaboration seemed a bit surprising to both of us. Fusalp is a relatively discrete brand with headquarters in Annecy and owned by Lacoste heirs, while Chloé is a well-known brand that is part of the Richemont group. Two worlds, two sizes, two visions, one joint collection. Different questions arose for me as to the benefits of such a collaboration. I presume that Fusalp’s marketing department had done some extensive research on their customer base and identified Chloé as being the best fit (based on their internal criteria) to launch a common ski-wear capsule.
I decided to perform an independent data-driven study based on the analysis of Fusalp’s Instagram followers. The idea is straightforward: extract all the pages followed by a large enough sample of Fusalp’s followers whose profile is public, and identify the pages that the audience has in common. The data is publicly available, and the study is conducted while respecting existing data privacy regulations.
Audience Understanding Research
Having a precise idea of what area of interest your followers have in common is very important. Conducting audience research allows marketers to better understand their attitudes, behaviours, and habits, hence to understand them.
The methodology I have developed in this use case offers several actionable benefits:
1) Improving your customer knowledge: Analyze your followers’ areas of interest and create data-backed buyer persona profiles. By knowing what interests your audience, you can create content and products that they will consume immediately.
2) Identifying the competitive landscape from your following perspective: Sometimes brands have an erroneous perception of what their “real” competition might be. This can help you drive more performing ad campaigns.
3) Identifying influencers or brand ambassadors that resonate the best with your audience: What better option do you have to find the voice for your brand than discovering it from your existing audience. Relying on personas that are trusted by your target audience will help you more easily run influencer campaigns.
4) Identifying possible partners: Just like in the case of Fusalp x Chloé, more and more brands do collaborations. Other notable collaborations include Louis Vuitton x Supreme, Dior x Jordan, Prada x Adidas, Balenciaga x Vibram, Louis Vuitton x NBA, Moncler x Rimowa or, more recently, Gucci x The North Face.
5) Identifying the most suitable media channels: Knowing what media your followers prefer will help you choose the right partner through whom you can communicate to your target audience.
Ultimately, knowing your audience will help you align your marketing strategies with your audience’s language and behaviour to personalize your offering, content, and message.
Research methodology
1) Statistical background
The first step was to choose a sample that is precise enough and representative of the population. The table below provides some indication of how big the sample should be to ensure the results are representative of the entire population.
In our case, Fusalp’s entire Instagram follower’s population size is 47k (as of December 2020). To get a 99% confidence level with a confidence interval of 2.4%, we should analyze approximately 2,700 profiles.
2) Instagram Data extraction
The data extraction was split into two different flows:
- The first flow consisted of extracting the list of Fusalp’s followers and then randomly selecting 2700 profiles.
- Once I had the list of profiles, I extracted the list of profiles followed by each of these 2,700 profiles.
There are different tools allowing you to get this type of data from Instagram. It can be quite challenging to extract data given the various API restrictions.
3) Data analysis
Over 2.2 million rows were extracted in the second step. Each row represented a profile followed by one of the 2700 Fusalp’s followers. Each follower has a certain amount of followed pages, the idea of the study was to analyze the overlap between followers (i.e. identify the most common pages).
The diagram below represents the relationship between brands and their followers along with the other pages followed by followers. The schema is simplified and does not represent a possible direct relationship between followers nor between brands.
In the case of Fusalp x Chloé, the top 25 common pages are displayed in the table below.
We can observe from this table that the Chloé brand came in the 21st position of most “popular” brands among Fusalp’s followers. We can note that there are more popular luxury brands that would be a better “fit” in terms of Fusalp’s audience preferences.
Note: From these top 25 pages, only one seems surprising, and this is “National Geographic.” This is the only account that is not related to fashion or luxury industries. However, we can presume that given Fusalp’s audience’s relationship with mountains and winter sports, they are also interested in nature and the related media.
The chart above shows the different categories the pages belong to. We can find that the biggest part belongs to clothing brands, whether it’s luxury, fashion, or winter clothing. Among other categories, we can outline personas and various media pages.
Key findings
1) Customer knowledge: The audience has their interests in fashion and luxury-related topics in common.
2) Competitive landscape: Moncler is the real competitor to Fusalp based on the audience’s preferences. Knowing this will help you define your competitive marketing strategy (adwords, SEO, etc.).
3) Possible influencers or brand ambassadors: The members of the Jenner family seem to be the most followed among Fusalp’s audience.
4) Other possible partners: Chanel, Hermès, Gucci, LV, Prada, Dior, and other luxury brands could be other potential partners for Fusalp should they consider another similar collaboration.
5) The most suitable media channels: Vogue is, without a doubt, the “go-to” media partner to communicate to the target audience, along with National Geographic (should they find a fitting edition focused on winter sports).
Other findings
The chart below provides an overview of the number of various pages by their “popularity” among Fusalp’s followers.
Only one account (Chanel) is followed by over a quarter of followers (27%). Given the confidence interval and the 2.4% margin of error, we can extrapolate in 99% of cases that the real number of followers that liked Chanel’s page is between 24.8% and 29.6% (27.2% ± 2.4%). The same logic can be applied for all other less “popular” pages. Given the error margin, I have decided to keep only the pages with over 5% of “overlap”.
Based on the distribution, it would make sense to analyze the pages that are followed by at least 7.5% of Fusalp’s followers (in this case, this represents a total of 112 Instagram accounts).
Note: only the top 25 pages were shared in this study, to have a more complete picture the remaining 87 pages should be analyzed and classified.
The chart above provides the distribution of Fusalp’s followers by the total number of followed accounts. We can observe that over a quarter of the sample population follows over 1,500 accounts. We could question the relevance of such followers in defining the audience understanding and interests mapping. Indeed, given the historical trend from Instagram users to increase their following by practicing so-called “follow-for-follow” strategy, we could doubt the importance that is allocated by the user to the brand in question. It is hard enough to gain someone’s attention on Instagram and be seen by your own following, let alone reaching non-followers.
Conclusion
Knowing your target audience plays a vital role in setting up your global marketing efforts for success. Analyzing audience data should be the first step in creating impactful content and customer acquisition strategies that will help you achieve your business objectives.
Knowing your audience’s demographics, location, and interests will help you better understand what users are looking for and deliver more value through appropriate and engaging content. It also allows brands to create more personal messages that resonate with their audience and are aligned with their core values.
If you’re a brand or an agency working with a brand and would like to perform similar audience research, get in touch with me, I will be happy to assist you.
