I’ll state my intention up front.

The entire point of this article is to make the case for behavioral segmentation for property owners—who typically use demographics to inform property decisions. At the end we will create a five point strategy for two properties with the same visitor demographics, yet the quantifiably different online, social, and retail patterns.

We've all had this happen at some point. Two locations are demographically similar, yet perform differently. Perhaps the greatest contributing factor is unseen: The behaviors and interests of visitors - regardless of their demographics. 

People can appear demographically identical, yet in reality have very different tastes.

Consider the visitor demographics of these two shopping and entertainment properties. Newport on the Levee and Atlantic Drive.

Through the lens of visitor demographics these two locations are identical. We’d have every reason to recruit the same tenants and position similar marketing to a similar audience. Although demographics are easy to understand, intuitively we know they are not the full story. 

Let’s look at the visitors to these properties through the lens of a behavioral segmentation, splitting visitors into 17 high level segments:

Immediately we see major differences in the type of people showing up. Newport is frequented by blue collar workers and families. Atlantic Station attracts singles and young professionals. Visitor demographics average-out to the same, yet not one behavioral segment overlaps. Retailing and marketing these locations should look different.  

But how is it possible to know online and offline behaviors of property visitors?

PersonaLive segmentation uses social media, mobile foot traffic, online activity, and individual-level demographics to organize every US household into one of 80 behavioral segments. These segments provide visibility to the online and offline preferences of the customers visiting any US property. 

PersonaLive’s Append Feature segments every property visitor when you upload a mobile report or draw a polygon around the property. The data is available in minutes.

Property Strategy Using Behavioral Data

How does a property strategy change when you know the online and offline activity of customers? Let’s take a look at how different our approach would be for these two properties by focusing on the top to visiting segments. This time getting more granular by splitting visitors into 80 segments instead of 17.

The point of looking at the differences in these two segments is to create a five point property plan that is simple and clear yet data-backed.

We will assume that these properties will focus on their top segments. #BabiesBurbs&Blessings for Newport and #Urbanists for Atlantic Station. Let’s start with the basics.

As their name would imply, people in the #BabiesBurbs&Blessings segment tend to have kids and live in the suburbs. People in #Urbanist segment are single and live in the city. Both are of similar age and income.

Things get interesting when you can see how quantifiably different these people’s lifestyle and retail behaviors are. Let’s look at the apparel and restaurant visitation patterns of each segment’s mobile devices in the midwest (Newport) and southeast (Atlantic Station) regions.

What fashion brands do they visit?

‍

What fast casual restaurants do they go to?

‍

What about fashion brands they follow on social media?

‍

What fitness, recreation, and entertainment amenities should we include?

‍

And their website behaviors?

Using this information we can create a five point plan for both properties that is data backed and quantifiable.

There you have it. A full-fledged property spec for two locations that, while demographically equivalent, have visitors with very different retail behavior and demand. PersonaLive helps CRE professionals account for the behavior and interests of customers and design insightful, data-backed sales presentations in half the time.

Demographics Are Not The Whole Story / Your Foot Traffic Data Can Do More

Knowing the online, social, and retail patterns of your visitors helps you rebuild leasing strategy, tenant strategy, and sales collateral from the customer up. And did I mention that you can send social media marketing directly to these segments through the Audience Builder? Don’t throw demographics out. They are a type of currency and common language. But at best demographics are a proxy for visitor interests. Why not use visitors' actual interests instead?

Want to learn more? Watch the on-demand webinar.