What is segmentation?
Segmentation is a marketing process that divides customers and prospects into groups based on factors such as age, location, interests, social grouping, and wealth.
Why do we need segmentation?
Once upon a time, marketing was much simpler – a one-size-fits-all promotional approach could be effective in a market with limited competition. As competition increased and more sophisticated consumers emerged, marketers began to recognize that products sold better if promotions were targeted at a specific group of potential customers (in other words, a segment) who were more likely to win. buy the product.
How can you apply segmentation to your business?
If you have an established business, you already have customers who have bought from you. Do you know anything about them? You can probably infer what gender they are from their name and where they live from their shipping address. Now you can segment your customers by gender or location in that case.
Who buys more of your products, men or women? Can you find out their age? A customer questionnaire may help you learn more about them. If you know which ages and gender buy the most of your product, you can tweak your promotions to appeal to these historically better segments of your potential customers.
Why bother with segmentation?
Modern clients have individualized and sophisticated tastes. People have different priorities at different stages of their life. If you try to attract everyone, you may not attract anyone.
Segmentation allows you to discover the type of person who is likely to buy more from you and the motivations that drive them. By applying segmentation to your business, you will begin to understand your business on a higher level as you see that not all customers are the same.
Segmentation and targeting
Once you’ve segmented, you can target specific segments with greater precision, with text and images that will engage people in that segment.
For example, if you were a candy maker, you could target one promotion to children who eat them and another to grandparents who like to buy candy for their grandchildren. It would promote characteristics such as taste and appearance for children. With grandparents, you would promote how happy children are with candy and how much more they would love them for giving them this specific candy.
By creating messages designed to specifically appeal to different groups, you will engage them more deeply, increasing the chances that they will buy from you. Successful companies understand that to sell to a customer, you must understand them and their needs. Different markets, and different types of customers within those markets, require customized approaches specific to each one, if maximum success is to be achieved. They spend time and money trying to find out more about their customers, through questionnaires, focus groups, and data mining. This allows them to more closely meet the needs of their market, which generates higher income as more people identify with and buy the product.