Segmenting your audience: Where to start?
There is no golden rule for tailoring bullseye customer groups. The segmentation process is strongly sensitive to the whole journey of your business activity.
However, by following 4 segmentation dimensions you will be able to build strongly differentiable customer segments:
Company size
Large enterprises differ from SMEs by their precise demands. Moreover, they are likely to make orders in superior volumes. On this terms you can offer reduced fare allowances to strengthen your partnership, which is not the case with SMEs.
Decision-making particularities
Having enreached your contact base with new representatives of X company, you should know if they are competent for making a deal or whether they are indirect influencers. Rearrange your contacts by power zones. Deliver your product features to strategic managers and communicate your price lists to finance responsible.
Financial indicators
Financial metrics can superficially tell you about possible quantitative and qualitative purchase volumes of your product. However, this is not the only signal to opt. Your exquisite product offers targeting company with profit margin around zero and CCC credit ratings will probably be a miss-hit.
Industry
Take into account that particular business sectors have diverse requirements to your product. Supposedly company X delivers computer software to bank holding company and educational institution. Obviously, basic package perfectly works for secondary school, meanwhile bank requires advanced digital security and accountancy software. Segment your database and tailor your products accordingly.
GETTING STARTED WITH SEGMENTATION
To accurately target your contacts, keep in mind that segmenting is ought to be part of your business routine. Widening your dataset is the kickoff point. Tough challenge lies in gathering information about your customers.
1. Get the most of your landing page
At this early stage don’t lose the chance to better know your prospect. Add non-obligatory blank spaces such as DoB or gender. There it is! You already have 2 demographic parameters. Don’t be afraid to be pushy, as you are leaving your prospect a choice.
2. Track purchasing behavior
You can doubtedly track volume, frequency and other purchasing particularities without third party tracking systems. Google Analytics is one of free web-tracking services to highlight your prospects web-patterns. Appropriate segmentation by behavioral parameters is the step before success. Use marketing automation services if you can’t handle massive datasets. HubSpot lets you analyze in-depth your datasets.
3. Ask them directly
Questionnaires and polls are a great example of direct addressing. Your customers know best what they want, don’t waste your resources by searching for needle in haystack. Don’t forget to reward your prospects for their efforts, anyway it’s a win-win.
4. Update real-time
Time changes, so do you and your prospects. Countless reasons force consumers to change their purchase behavior and preferences. Make sure you are updated to every segmentation shifts. As a mistargeted communication is another step to customer opt out.
LAST BUT NOT LEAST
Buyer persona journey keeps being a baseline of segmentation pillar. Segmentation process can be regarded in to interrelated dimensions. Horizontal dimension includes all mentioned above and is customizable depending on the industry and other factors. But vertical (progressive) segmentation is a golden rule for every business to remember. Make sure to keep your every action is reflective to the progress of buyer personas in their journey.
