Marketing segmentation is when your business puts the needs of their customers first.
Marketing segmentation allows your company to engage your audience and optimize your messaging. This is important because it takes into account the needs and priorities of your audience on an individual basis. It’s not easy to collect information about your audience, but it is the first step to an excellent marketing strategy.
To obtain this information a business has to look at how their audience interacts with their products and services. Some metrics you can look at to determine relevancy are:
- Open Rates
- Click Through Rates
- Time On Page
- Engagement (Likes, Tweets, etc.)
Once you have some idea of what content works for what people, you can begin to optimize your content. Your business needs to focus on providing relevant content for specific audience members.
Finding Commonalities
Market segmentation is centered around a persona group. A persona group is a collection of individuals who interact with your business who share a common:
- Goal
- Need
- Desire
- Demographics
- How To Take Action
Your business can develop a strategy once you know what commonalities exist. Commonalities show you how to provide value to the most people at once. This information also shows the greatest need to focus your energy on.
Core Criteria To Segment By
Goal
The best way to understand why someone uses your products or services is to think about what they are trying to accomplish.
Think about their pain points and desired gains. Your Value Proposition is usually tied to the reason someone uses your brand other another.
Need
A key ingredient to understanding your audience is to think about their needs. What problems do they have, what pains do they experience, and what issues do they want to alleviate? Pain/discomfort is one of the strongest motivations for people to take action.
Think through the problems people experience to find out why they will need your product or service. Once you discover these reasons, you can deliver solutions specific to their needs. This type of approach makes you more relevant.
Desire
Your audience also has desires. These are the wishes, vision, and aspirations individuals want. For example, women want to feel beautiful (desire), so they buy makeup. Shoppers want to save money (desire), so they buy on Amazon.
An individual’s desires are not quite as high of a motivating influence as a need is, but this is a crucial piece of the puzzle. Your value is almost always described by the desires of your audience. Keep the desires of your audience in mind to discover what they want from your business. This information will help you segment your messaging to a focused persona group.
Demographic
Once you understand the goal of your audience, you can look at demographic factors that direct their mindset and actions. This phase looks at the individual demographics to help define the decision-making process.
A married mother in Ohio likely has different needs and desires than a single male college student in California. Individuals are shaped by their location, age, and circumstances.
Demographic differences guide their needs and desires. Understanding how demographics influence your brand interaction will help you segment even further.
Individuals have different needs and desires. These differences cause individuals to seek different products and services for their unique situations.
Consider what a person does on a daily basis and their identity to start segmenting your market.
How To Take Action
Individuals need different motivators to take action. For example, some people need to do a lot of research before making a purchase. Other people rely on reviews to guide their purchasing decisions.
Always consider what will make each person group to take action when creating a strategy. This will determine what content you create, and when/how you distribute it. Providing the right content to the right people will direct them along the best path for their needs.
Final Thoughts
Segmenting your marketing message is not an easy task. There are a lot of variables to consider. Just remember that absolute numbers are not as important as confidence. An excellent way to build trust is to confirm assumption you have about your audience.
The most important part of market segmentation is your confidence in your personas. Without confidence, you will not be able to focus your message or use the right marketing channel to their full potential.