Marketing segmentation is one part of developing marketing personas – a representative description of your ideal customer(s). When you’re first starting out offering a service or product, it can be tough to figure out who you’re marketing to. Sure, you may have a vague idea, but without sitting down and taking the time to dig deep and research who needs your solution, all of your marketing strategy will more than likely be akin to standing on a street spinning signs and hoping someone drives by.
There’s no need to kick off any marketing campaign with this mentality, so let’s go over some marketing segmentation basics you can put into practice.
To begin with, marketing segmentation is defining your target market. It might be easier to identify who isn’t your target audience in the beginning, but you should quickly be able to drill down to a specific population that needs your products and services.
Don’t forget to include all possible prospects – a lot of products and services have more than one target market.
5 Marketing Segmentation Areas
You’re splitting potential clients into groups that are similar. For example, you may have groups who share the common characteristics or needs below:
- Geography – a common physical location or boundary; climate (warm vs. cold); population type (urban vs. rural)
- Demographic – age, gender, race, education and occupation are just a few very common demographics you should collect and analyze
- Psychographic – beliefs, interests, activities and opinions are used where applicable.
- Behavioral – user status; ready to buy or not; event-driven needs are some behavior-based market segmentation factors to consider.
- Company type – privately owned or publicly traded; company size; job titles or functions are company factors when segmenting your target market(s).
These are just the basics. If you really know your ideal customer, there’s probably a dozen more elements you’ll consider when doing a marketing segmentation exercise. And, as your business prospers, you may find that you’ll need to refine your market segment as you respond to client feedback to improve or change your business offerings.
Are you challenged by doing an in-depth market segment to create personas? Measured Results Marketing understands how elusive it is to draw your marketing persona picture – much like looking for the Yeti in the wilderness. If that’s the case, email or call us at 571-606-3106 to talk about this and your other marketing program requirements. We’ve been there. We can help.
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