Why Segment?
Simply put, it recognizes that your audience is not one-size-fits-all. A marketing approach may work better for one segment than another. For example, you can tweak your offer based what group you’re communicating with. It allows you to focus your efforts and tailor your approach in order to yield the best results.
Before segmenting, ask yourself if your ENTIRE audience can be reached with the same message, through the same channel. Likely, not.
How to Segment?
An analysis of your audience needs to be conducted to determine how to best segment it into groups.
You should consider:
How the audience is affected by the problems you solve
Demographics (age, gender, location, ethnicity, financial status, education, etc.)
Behaviors (readiness to engage, where they are in the buyer’s journey)
Psychographics (values, interests, attitudes, personalities, etc.)
Use this information to create groups within your audience. Look for your primary or most ideal group, then segment all others into secondary segments based on similarities.It can help to develop personas to help narrow down your segments and humanize your audience. It’s easier to develop messaging when you have one specific profile in mind. After all, the whole point of segmenting is to better communicate with your audience.
Feel free to change the language you use and the tone of voice in your communications based on what group is receiving it. Likewise, one group may respond better to an email, while another group will do better with a direct mail piece. Social media ads might do well with a younger, more tech driven audience segment while cold calls could be good for an older segment.
