Who is your perfect customer? How many of them are on your current client roster? What makes them perfect to you?
Ask anyone what makes an ideal client and you’ll probably get similar answers:
- They’re honest and upfront about their circumstances and what they need from you
- Asks questions and listens to the answers
- Provides essential information in a timely fashion
- Ensures reliable, swift payment
- Shows respect for your expertise and how your product or service supports their business growth
- Alignment of key values
- Your main contact is an all-round good egg
This is the sort of perfect customer everyone wants to build a solid, long-term relationship with. You’ve probably got a couple you’re working with right now. Maybe you’re thinking about how to develop new perfect customers in a different market or location. Perhaps you’re considering a new product concept for an entirely new ideal client. But how can you grow this group?
Using high quality audience segmentation research helps you define and find more of your perfect customers.
What is audience segmentation?
Audience segmentation is a strategic marketing approach that involves dividing a target market into distinct subgroups based on specific characteristics, behaviors, or preferences. This segmentation allows businesses to tailor their marketing messages and strategies to address the unique needs and interests of each segment. By understanding the diverse preferences and behaviors of their audience, companies can enhance their marketing effectiveness, drive customer engagement, and achieve higher conversion rates. For example:
- They found you through the same channel
- Their pain point is the same, even though they belong to different industries
- They have the same role on their buying team
- They share and amplify the same social values
- Their clients have the same needs and your product or service helps them excel in providing a solution
However your segments are defined, their purpose is to elicit specificity that you can use to create a beautifully targeted marketing strategy.
Why is audience segmentation important for your revenue strategy?
Using audience segmentation research underpins your sales and marketing strategy with depth and authority.
Audience segmentation analysis gives you reliable data so you can have complete confidence in your strategic decisions. There’s no second guessing involved because this is real information directly from your clients and future prospects.
You know you need a nuanced approach to reach every segment of your target audience effectively. Your audience segmentation research insights help you diversify and target your messaging to each section of your market. These custom findings also create stronger emotional connections because you’ve prioritized finding out how they really feel.
By using audience segmentation research to focus your energy, resources and budget accurately, your marketing strategy will generate better results and ROI.
Types of audience segmentation
There are several different types of audience segmentation research. You achieve a granular picture of your audiences by combining the right selection of these and making audience segmentation part of a wider research strategy.
- Demographic: all the basic information you can easily gather about someone – age, gender, income level, job title, marital status, physical location
- Behavioral: All the good stuff about their buying behavior – where they buy, when they make the purchase, how often they buy, where they find your service or product, how they access your online presence. You know the rest, you’ve already got the metrics analyzed.
- Psychographic/attitudinal: Going deeper into shared thoughts, feelings, perceptions, opinions and attitudes.
- Shared interests: Do any of your audience segments share similar interests or hobbies outside of their business life? That’s an emotion-grabbing link right there!
- Stage on the buyer’s journey: Are they top-of-funnel and just discovering your brand Or are they making their way along their journey map, considering all their options? Maybe it’s decision time. How do you help them at each stage?
- Existing engagement: Is this client already signed up to your email list and a frequent customer? Or are they only occasional lurkers on social media and rarely interact with your content? Doesn’t mean one’s less important than the other – they’ll just need a different strategy to secure a connection.
Audience segmentation vs market segmentation
Audience segmentation and market segmentation are two essential concepts in marketing, both aiming to break down a broad target market into more manageable and actionable segments. While they share similarities, they serve distinct purposes and have unique applications in crafting effective marketing strategies.
Audience segmentation, also known as customer segmentation, focuses on understanding the diverse needs, preferences, and behaviors of individual customers within a target market. It involves analyzing customer data, demographics, psychographics, and purchase history to create distinct customer profiles. The goal of audience segmentation is to identify specific groups of customers who share similar characteristics and tailor marketing efforts to address their individual needs. For example, an e-commerce business might segment its audience based on purchase behavior, creating targeted email campaigns to promote products aligned with each segment’s interests.
On the other hand, market segmentation takes a broader approach, dividing the overall market into homogeneous groups based on specific attributes or characteristics. These attributes can include industry type, geographical location, company size, and other macro-level factors that influence buying decisions. The aim of market segmentation is to identify viable market segments that offer growth opportunities for the business. For instance, a software company might segment its market based on industry verticals (e.g., healthcare, finance, education) to tailor its product offerings and marketing messages for each sector’s unique needs.
When you should do audience segmentation
Audience segmentation is a strategic approach that can significantly enhance marketing effectiveness and drive better results. However, it is crucial to identify the right scenarios and circumstances where audience segmentation can be particularly beneficial. Here are some key situations when implementing audience segmentation becomes crucial for businesses:
- Market Expansion: When entering new markets or expanding into different regions, audience segmentation can help businesses better understand the unique characteristics, preferences, and cultural influences of diverse customer groups. Tailoring marketing messages to resonate with each segment’s values and needs can foster greater acceptance and engagement in new markets.
- Product Launch: Introducing a new product or service demands a thorough understanding of the target audience. Audience segmentation allows businesses to identify early adopters, potential influencers, and other customer segments that may exhibit varying levels of interest and receptiveness to the new offering. This insight helps refine marketing strategies and optimize resource allocation for maximum impact.
- Customer Retention: Maintaining customer loyalty and preventing churn is a top priority for businesses. Audience segmentation enables the identification of high-value customers, frequent buyers, and those at risk of leaving. By recognizing the unique needs of each segment, businesses can implement targeted retention initiatives and personalized communication to foster lasting customer relationships.
- Personalized Marketing Campaigns: As consumers increasingly seek personalized experiences, audience segmentation becomes critical in delivering tailored marketing messages. By dividing the target audience into distinct segments based on demographics, behaviors, and preferences, businesses can create customized campaigns that resonate with each segment and foster a sense of connection with the brand.
- Competitive Analysis: Understanding the competitive landscape is essential for businesses to identify market opportunities and position themselves effectively. Audience segmentation aids in analyzing competitor’s customer bases, uncovering gaps in the market, and identifying underserved segments that can be targeted for growth.
- Digital Marketing Optimization: In the digital era, businesses have access to vast amounts of customer data. Audience segmentation allows for data-driven marketing optimization, ensuring that marketing efforts are directed towards the most relevant customer segments, leading to improved ROI and campaign performance.
- Customer Experience Enhancement: By segmenting customers based on their interactions with the brand, businesses can gain insights into customer pain points and preferences at various touchpoints. This knowledge enables targeted improvements to enhance the overall customer experience.
What are the benefits of audience segmentation
Audience segmentation analysis doesn’t just help you plan a more targeted marketing strategy. Segmentation insights send waves of positive impact throughout your whole organization – you just need to act on the business-wide benefits.
- Enhanced Personalization: By targeting specific customer groups with personalized messaging, businesses can foster deeper connections and increase engagement
- Improved Customer Experience: Understanding individual preferences allows businesses to provide tailored experiences, leading to higher customer satisfaction
- Higher Marketing Efficiency: Efficient allocation of resources to high-potential segments leads to better ROI on marketing campaigns
- Targeted Content and Campaigns: Customized content resonates better with the intended audience, driving higher response rates
- Increased Customer Retention: Addressing unique needs and pain points boosts customer loyalty and retention rates
- Discovering New Opportunities: Uncovering niche segments leads to new market opportunities and product innovation
- Competitive Advantage: A customer-centric approach differentiates the brand and strengthens its market position
- Efficient Product Development: Insights from audience segments guide the development of products that align with customer preferences
- Enhanced Decision Making: Data-driven segmentation empowers informed business decisions
- Scalability and Adaptability: Segmentation strategies can scale with business growth while maintaining relevance and personalization
Audience segmentation tips
As you get into your audience segmentation research journey, here’s 7 quick tips to maximize its power.
Attitudinal research isn’t just for the marketing team
It’s a great idea to engage each of your specialist teams with the attitudinal research from the start of the process. Then they can envisage how they’re going to use the results even before the attitudinal research study’s complete.
1. Dust off those brand personas
Insights from your audience segmentation research will breathe new life into your team of brand personas. You can create current, real, living brand personas that are truly representative of your current and ideal clients. If they’re embedded throughout every department in your company, everyone benefits.
2. Plot their course
Once you’ve updated your brand personas, replot your customer journey maps. Re-evaluate where you meet each of them on their path to purchase using your attitudinal research custom findings. Also consider where they meet each other and how the buying team dynamics affects final decision-making.
3. The devil’s in the detail
Always take the opportunity to use the finer details to personalize and engage with each audience segment. It shows that you understand them and builds brand trust.
4. Size matters
Practically speaking, your audience segments need to be specific but not too small. If you end up with several tiny segments, their management becomes too cumbersome.
5. Set objectives
How will you know that the actions you take based on your research insights are successful? When you build your strategy from attitudinal research insights it must include clear, quantifiable objectives.
6. Ranked segments
It’s impossible to focus on every audience group simultaneously. You need to rank your segments by their importance to your business. Then start at the top and work your way through.
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