Socio & Geo-demographic Segmentation

What we know today as a census began in Egypt over 5,300 years ago, where it was used by the rulers for tax gathering and to determine a person's fitness for the military. 

In Australia, the national census started in 1911 some ten years after our country was united as a Commonwealth. The orginal aim of our country's first census was to provide a snapshot of Australia's people and their housing in the various states. Fast forward a century and now gathering information about the population extends signicantly past the government making decisions in relation to the determination of local services and facilities across the country. The power of computing combined with big data and GIS modelling software provides both the public and private sectors with vast amounts of information that is used to predict our behaviour.

Socio & Geo-demographic Segmentation - better targeted marketing, segmentation & ABS mesh block mapping

What gets interesting for marketers is when ABS census maps are linked to databases. Companies like Pitney Bowes Software have software called Map Info that is designed to visualise the relationships between data and geography, it facilitates customer data mining and modeling to enable customer insight, better targeting and prediction of future customer behaviour.

When a large supermarket chain such as Woolworths or Coles analyses their point-of-sale (POS) data with other geo demographic data they are able to determine a local area's sales trends, develop regional specific marketing campaigns and accurately predict customer loyalty within a determined socio economic segment. Everytime we use a supermarket rewards card or pay with our credit card the data collected provides a detailed profile about our purchasing behaviour.

In simple terms you can imagine locations are assigned a demographic segment using only their address and age are then mashed with a psychographic profile which differentiates a suburbs consumer types from each other by profiling their underlying psychological needs which is driven by their personal values, attitudes, interests and lifestyles.

Each suburban street in Australia is given a different classification depending on the consumer characteristics within that area. This data then gives marketers the business intelligence to develop peronalised customer acquistion and retention strategies, cross-selling opportunities and upsell campaigns by developing a deep insight into existing customers and identifying the location and target similar potential customers.

Using LinkedIn to promote your personal brand

With the number of Australians now using LinkedIn surpassing 2 million this year, the social platform LinkedIn has become more than just networking for professionals, it’s become the business to business (b2b) marketplace for many Australian companies and the recruitment ground for both HR agencies and companies head hunting talent.

Last week at the Social Media Club Melbourne, Cliff Rosenberg the Managing Director of LinkedIn Australia & New Zealand gave a presentation to a very packed room on the new LinkedIn Signal tool which works a little like twitter in the sense of being your very own personalised news service. Signal aggregates comments from everyone on LinkedIn who's in your professional network, the companies you follow and industry groups you have joined.



Described as your personal business intelligence dashboard, Signal allows you to access the most relevant insights from the constant stream of status updates and news from your connections. Conversely, it can also be used to put your business at the centre of conversation with your customer and promote your products and services informally using a viral word of mouth approach.

LinkedIn Signal offers 8 filters to modify your stream. To see what people are tweeting or sharing on a particular topic you can narrow or expand your view of the stream based on the following filters: Network, Industry, Company, Time published, Geo / Region, School or keywords and hash tags such as #SMCMelb.

As a way to get your business into your customer’s Signal stream you should actively participate in LinkedIn groups and respond to relevant requests for LinkedIn Answers. Additionally you should also regularly update your LinkedIn status. This activity will also increase your visibility on LinkedIn by ensuring you appear more often on your connections’ home page feeds and Linkedin Signal.

Like any social network, you need to be proactive and consistent in your efforts to make LinkedIn work for your business and personal brand. Some tips to help nurture your business relationships include: sharing relevant content via status updates and sending contacts individual messages when appropriate. Note: By integrating your Twitter account with LinkedIn, Tweets that contain #in will automatically be posted to your LinkedIn account.

This blog orginally appeared on Revium's blog