Product Spotlight: Media Planning with Community-Based Insights (Herdify)
Media planning has traditionally revolved around analysing audiences, channels, platforms, messaging, and advertisements to uncover the most effective ways to promote a brand or product. But here’s the challenge: how do you pinpoint the perfect moment to engage the right audience?
Relying solely on demographics and segmentation data can lead to wasted ad spend on audiences that won’t connect with the brand. Worse, it overlooks those who might engage, simply because their community isn’t considered influential by conventional metrics.
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This brings me to Herdify — a company I recently encountered on Linkedin that takes a fascinating, behavioural science-driven approach to media planning. Herdify focuses on uncovering real-world communities by analysing a business’s first-party sales data. Their approach delves into the patterns of where and how often transactions occur, uncovering the hidden footprints of word-of-mouth influence — distinct from traditional advertising or digital campaigns.
Pandemic Models Reimagined for Marketing
What makes Herdify’s approach especially intriguing is its foundation in pandemic modeling. Just as scientists predict the spread of viruses through populations, Herdify adapts these models to forecast how brand messages ripple through communities. The result? Businesses can pinpoint where offline word-of-mouth is genuinely driving consumer behaviour.
The Three Layers of Herdify’s Process
Herdify’s methodology involves a layered approach to understanding and mapping influence:
1. Behavioural Model of the UK
This foundational layer examines social behaviours across various regions to establish a broad understanding of how communities interact.
2. Sales Location Data for the Brand
By mapping a brand’s first-party sales data, Herdify identifies patterns in where transactions occur, revealing geographic hotspots of influence.
3. Location Connectedness Ranking
Herdify then evaluates how interconnected different locations are. This layer is crucial for understanding how word-of-mouth influence spreads within and between communities.
Making Invisible Communities Visible
By integrating behavioural science with AI, Herdify makes the unseen visible. Their tools illuminate the hidden networks of influence, enabling businesses to direct their marketing strategies with pinpoint precision. Instead of chasing broad demographics, brands can focus on communities where word-of-mouth is already working its magic.
Herdify’s approach offers a glimpse into the future of media planning — one where understanding the nuanced behaviours of real-world communities takes precedence over broad-brush segmentation. For brands seeking to maximize impact while minimising waste, this methodology could be a game-changer.
Conclusion
It all comes down to authenticity. By understanding offline social proof, Herdify acts as a catalyst for spreading recommendations and nudging customers toward conversion. Real-world word-of-mouth influences, combined with behavioral science-driven modeling, enable not only more authentic and valuable targeting but also a more efficient and focused approach. This stands in contrast to the traditional “wider net” strategies, making Herdify’s method an interesting choice for businesses looking to maximize their marketing impact.
