The beginning of the new year for most brands means setting new goals for growth.
For long-time established brands that means expanding into new and untapped markets. But reaching these new audiences requires more than just brand ambition – it requires access to the right audience data to help pave the way.
One of the fastest ways to uncover opportunities for audience growth is by analyzing your competitors’ audiences. By identifying the groups they’ve captured that you haven’t, you can understand what it takes to connect with those audiences and win them over.
To demonstrate how you can do this, we will use three brand examples. In each example we will show you how to use Audience Intelligence, available in the Semrush App Center, to grow your own audience in 2025.
Note: This article was created with contributions from Jackie Davies from audience.
Example 1: LEGO
LEGO has been around for over 90 years, and throughout that time LEGO has mostly been looked at as a “boy’s toy”, despite their efforts to create female-focused LEGO sets.
In 2012 they had some success with their “Friends” LEGO collection which was created with girls in mind, and this grew their female audience slightly, but today the data shows that LEGO’s audience is still 71.26% male.
Earlier this year they rolled out their biggest campaign.celebrating girls and their creative worlds”. It’s obvious that growing their female audience is still a big priority of theirs, and will likely be a major focus for the brand in the new year.
mega bloks is LEGO’s competitor, and has been around for about 30 yearsWhat’s interesting is that although they sell a very similar product, their audience actually skews more female:
This poses an opportunity for LEGO. In order for LEGO to grow their female audience, they don’t need to look much further than the Mega Bloks audience. Because, here’s a similar brand who has been able to capture these female audiences who would likely be just as interested in playing with LEGO, if LEGO targeted them using a similar strategy.
To target these female Mega Bloks audiences, LEGO must learn what their interests are, how they behave online, and who they are influenced by. All details can be used to create impactful ads that are guaranteed to resonate.
For example, within the Audience Intelligence platform we can view the demographic, psychographic, personality and interest data that tell us who this MegaBloks female audience is at their core.
Here is also where the AI comes into play. The app uses artificial intelligence to analyze shared interests and behaviors of and organize these affinity groups into clusters for you to review.
The “Media Affinity” tab within Audience Intelligence displays the types of media this female Mega Bloks audience loves. A rich insight here is that they are big fans of JoJo Siwa’s YouTube channel.
So in order to get their product in front of this audience, LEGO should run ad space on JoJo Siwa’s YouTube videos.
This is just one way LEGO could use Audience Intelligence to learn from their competitors’ audience, and capture a new target demographic, growing their female customer base in 2025.
Example 2: Monster Energy Drink
When you think of Monster Energy Drinks you probably think about their audience of Gamers or BMX Bikers. This has been their target audience for a long time; these “male gamer and sports fans” types.
You can see when we look at their audience that these are the types of clusters that surface:
Monster’s ads also reflect this; that they are used to target this gamer audience.
But Monster has now expanded their energy drink offering to include low calorie and zero sugar optionsand they have gone with a more feminine packaging style suggesting they are looking to expand their audience outside of this gamer or sports player lifestyle, and towards a more female fitness focused audience.
If this is indeed the case, the simplest way to do this would be to look to a competitor who has already paved the way.
CELSIUS Energy Drinks is one brand that has already managed to capture an audience of “Health & Fitness” individuals who are looking for this zero sugar, low calorie energy drink option to consume before the gym or a busy day on the go.
We can see proof of this in the ads they create and the clusters that surface within their own audience,
All Monster has to do in this scenario is use Audience Intelligence to automatically surface the most important insights on this “Health & Fitness” cluster such as their top interests and influencers, their defining demographic data, and how they self-describe; all data needed to target and capture them effectively.
For an audience of “Health & Fitness” fans, the most effective way to reach them is probably through the fitness influencers they follow and trust.
Within the CELSIUS Audience insights report, Monster can access their list of top influencers like the one we see below:
Monster can then begin to partner with these same influencers to promote Monster Energy Drink’s new line of “healthier” energy drink products.
This is a data-backed, guaranteed way to put their product in front of this “Health & Fitness” audience and ultimately grow their reach.
Example 3: Netflix
In recent years, Netflix has been trying to expand into the gaming scene,
They have introduced over 100 game titles to their streaming service since November 2021, and they still have massive plans to develop this section of their business. They must believe there is still a lot of opportunity for growth.
According to Netflix’s Audience Intelligence report, “Gaming” is currently just one small section of their overall audience,
In order to grow this audience, they need to know how to target them more effectively. In the gaming world there are hundreds of different sub-communities of gamers, all of which need to be advertised differently.
Twitch is an online gaming streaming service with 36 million monthly users.
They’re a great resource for Netflix, who can analyze their audience of gamers and figure out the best ways to target them.
If we look at Twitch’s Audience Intelligence report, you can see a variety of different gamer types within the Twitch audience,
Netflix could use the details on each cluster to build out similar gaming audiences within their social ad platforms (ie. by age, gender, distinctive interests and keywords) to target these audiences directly.
This is a great example of a brand entering a new market (from TV and Movie streaming to Gaming) that could use the help of Audience Intelligence to target these net-new audience groups.
Reach New Audiences in 2025
Expanding into new audiences is essential for established brands to see growth in 2025. But growing an audience demands data-driven strategies.
By “looking over the fence” and leveraging the Audience Intelligence app in the SEMRUSH app center brands can uncover the insights they need to identify untapped audiences and craft campaigns that resonate with them.
Whether it’s the example of LEGO trying to attract a new female audience, Monster targeting a new lifestyle group, or Netflix connecting with a whole net-new audience of gamers – the key to growing your audience is understanding them deeply enough to engage with them effectively. .
With Audience insights at your fingertips breaking into these new markets becomes achievable, and scalable – try it today.