What your brand can learn from how Strava reaches active people

Strava is the home to 125 million people motivating themselves and others to lead active lives. We’re also becoming the home for brands to reach those people, and we provide ways, like Sponsored Challenges, to not just reach them, but motivate them to live their best active lives.

Brands like these – and specifically their marketers – are constantly on the lookout for inspiration, advice and learning, particularly from those like them, that seek to build awareness with active people. So where better for us to start than to ask our own Growth Marketing team?

We sat down with Lauren Pica (more commonly known here as just “Pica”), our very own Senior Director of Global Growth Marketing,  an established marketing leader, to help us understand how Strava reaches and engages with active people – so you can too.

Who is this elusive “active crowd?” Are they the professional athletes for whom movement is an intrinsic part of who they are? Are they the assiduous runners who make an appearance at every 5K? Or are they just regular folks who hit the gym every once in a while? The answer is yes — to all of them.

The key is identifying common themes from users based on their activity on the platform, for example how they see goals, progress and motivation, and layering that into a segmented strategy that may feature different channels and other tactics within that.

What can marketers learn from this?

Although Strava is (of course) a platform, this same insight can and should apply to other brands regardless of their product type. Understanding your customer and segmenting into groups is an absolutely fundamental marketing skill, and crucial to effective messaging. Can you collect or observe data on your consumers from other sources, for example website engagement or purchase behavior? If so, then you can start to create segments and strategies to engage those segments.

The concept of an "active audience" is broad and inclusive. That’s why Pica sees the process of marketing to this crowd as “catering to a vast group of people who see themselves very differently.” Because being active isn’t just about hardcore sports or high-intensity workouts. It's about any form of movement that fits into someone’s daily life. 

Take Pica’s personal journey as an example. While she used to be regularly running in college, now she’s lucky if she can hit the pavement once a week. But she walks her dog three times a day, and that counts as being active for her, where she is in her life right now. That’s an experience a lot of people can relate to.

Interestingly enough, despite being active, many people don’t see themselves as such. Pica has found this to be especially true for women, who often feel the term sets too high a bar. This gap can be a tricky challenge in marketing, as many active folks might not identify with traditional athletic branding. So, how do you support such a vast group? 

"It starts with a level of mindfulness as a Marketer in recognizing how differently people engage with sport, and from there, digging into those levels of engagement to help create cohorts of your audiences based on a common theme such as motivation style."

“We've found, despite the vastness of this active group, there are common themes in motivation style — from people motivated by community to people motivated by progress, there are signals to user preferences that help us determine how we show up in terms our messaging, where we show up and in which specific channels, and what our end users really need from us as the platform they are utilizing to stay active.”

When it comes to the content you put out there, the most common platitude is the truest: you have to understand your audience. You have to do the legwork to know what challenges them, what motivates them, and what they want from you.

Pica: "It takes you being curious to ask what their experiences are, what they're seeking, and what their goals are. At Strava, we use targeted surveys combined with segmentation of on-platform behaviors to understand the actions and motivations of users. The goal is to ensure you're genuinely interested in getting to know your audience, and that that genuine interest is felt by them. Consistency and reliability are crucial here — interest doesn't just come from asking the questions, but also ensuring the information they provide you with is utilized to give them a better, more personalized user experience.”

Motivation in the active community often revolves around personal improvement, a sense of community, and a dash of friendly competition. People who love personal improvement look for progress, no matter how small. "Maybe I walked another 0.1 mile or 0.1 kilometer this week over last week. It doesn't necessarily have to mean that I am reducing my 5K time by a minute," Pica explains. For some, it’s all about making small steps forward. 

Community is also a big deal. Active folks often crave belonging and support through shared activities. As Pica puts it, "everybody around you is seeking some kind of progress or some kind of community, and there's a like-mindedness to a hobby or a part of their life that we all share." 

Pica also finds that a lot of people are driven by friendly competition and get a motivational kick from others. "Maybe you get into your Strava feed, you see that your friend ran a 5K this morning, and you think, I'd love to get out there too."

How we onboard Strava users to personalize their experience – and their marketing messages

We use this in our own user onboarding on Strava. When first signing up, we asked users what they want from our platform, and this is then used to personalize both the product and subsequent marketing to that user. 

We use this in our own user onboarding on Strava. When first signing up, we asked users what they want from our platform, and this is then used to personalize both the product and subsequent marketing to that user. 

Marketers obsess over channels. From email and organic social, to display, press, influencers, SEO… the list goes on.

Pica: “It's less about any one specific channel, but more how you orchestrate multiple channels together to create multi-touch harmony.”

“Of course, traditional heavyweights are still crucial. The Googles, the Metas of the world. It's important to be there. There is a place for you in these channels, whether it’s via organic or paid tactics.”

But there’s never going to be a holy grail, a single channel that transcends everything the others can accomplish. Especially not when we’re talking about an active audience, with so many different segments that require different approaches. In Pica’s words, “maybe push notifications are better for your competitive group because it's more instant whereas email might be more interesting to your group who's focused on progress because they want to engage with your content when they want to.” 

How to start?

“I always recommend starting with no budget and testing your scrappiness. For example, owned channels — like email, push notifications (if you’re lucky enough to have access to these), and organic social are essentially free. If you start with a first principles or build to capacity approach, you do what you can with what you have, learn, and go bigger from there as you build a clearer case for greater audience segmentation and channel expansion. Start with an email test — attempt a few iterations to determine messaging that resonates across audiences. Gain enough performance to 'make a case' to expand.”

“The real magic happens when you integrate multiple channels to achieve a flywheel. This means combining digital marketing efforts with real-life engagement to create “a more unique and authentic style of connecting with an audience. When you do it, and you do it right, the community feels that level of authenticity, and then it becomes its own beast.”

Pica points to Chipotle’s partnership with Strava, where the restaurant chain challenged our users to run segments in key markets like New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago. Those who achieved the fastest times in the leaderboards were rewarded with free lifestyle bowls for a whole year (if there ever was a stroke of marketing genius, we dare say this was it).

“That was a perfect example of bringing on-platform connection — of sharing this challenge, promoting this challenge to the community — to off-platform, where people were actively trying to run this segment, engage with the brand,” she explains. “And it turned into its own flywheel phenomenon. All of a sudden it was getting press pickup and going viral on social.”

We all know the importance of authenticity in content, but it’s not just for effect. It really drives results.

Few types of content are as authentic as user-generated content (UGC). Allowing your audience to tell their story with your brand holds more meaning than just you telling that story. It comes from a relatable, #nofilter place. 

Pica: “We’ve done so much with UGC via paid acquisition – some recent examples were with Breakfast Club and Tommie Runz. Both drove some of our highest performing campaigns, in my view because they reflect back the motivations and beliefs of that audience. We often think about what our personas are engaging with, what are they telling us and how can we serve them with what they’re asking for?”

As marketers, we know it typically takes multiple engagements to go from attention to conversion. But when you operate in the context of community, there's greater weight to every potential interaction. Each touchpoint is a chance to create a deeper, more meaningful relationship with your audience. 

And people crave that sense of community. Pica believes it’s because we’re desensitized to so many things and so chronically online that we end up seeking interaction with like-minded individuals. If a brand is propping up that community and its experiences, it creates an immense feeling of loyalty among its members.

Pica: “When something is so near and dear to someone’s heart like sport and how they engage with sport, what brings the community together is a shared feeling, a shared perspective, a shared love."

Very important addendum here: you can’t force your way in, nor can you buy community. You have to roll up your sleeves and build it. And it all goes back to showing up authentically for your audience. 

“If you’re inauthentic in your efforts, people sniff that out,” says Pica. “When something is so near and dear to someone’s heart like sport and how they engage with sport, what brings the community together is a shared feeling, a shared perspective, a shared love." Your brand needs to meet the audience at their level, showing up in ways that feel real and meaningful. 

Authenticity requires more than occasional engagement. It demands consistent effort, where you regularly show up for your community by sharing valuable content, asking questions, addressing their needs, and getting more people acquired into that space. "Whatever showing up means for you, your brand, and your customers or consumers. You have to show up," Pica emphasizes.

For Strava, we want to promote and support more women in movement and sport. So we fully commit to this both on our own platform but across our off-platform activity. Our Strive for More™ campaign involves partnering with women-owned organizations, donating and supporting women-led events, creating platforms for women to share their stories and more.