Customer Segmentation: A Guide to Reach Your Target Market

About 80% of new leads never turn into paying customers. Why? Namely, many businesses fail to connect with their audience.

If you’re targeting a broad audience, you might struggle to create personalized messages that appeal to your customers. With customer segmentation, you can improve your overall marketing strategy. You can create marketing messages that resonate with each audience group.

Then, you can improve the customer journey to convert more leads into sales!

Not sure where to get started? Here are the six target marketing tips you need for defining customer personas. With these tips, you can create distinct groups with your overall audience in mind.

Start connecting with customers! Begin creating your audience groups with these tips today.

1. Consider Your Niche

Before you begin the customer segmentation process, it’s important to understand your business from their point of view. Take the time to research your industry to better define your target audience.

Otherwise, you could make the mistake of focusing on a broad audience. Marketing to a broad audience isn’t always effective. Your messages might not resonate with the customer’s distinct needs and goals.

Instead, determine what niche your business falls under. Focusing on a niche industry will narrow down your target audience. You can focus on consumers who specifically need your offerings.

To better understand your niche, ask yourself:

• Why am I selling this product or service
• What need does it fulfill
• How does the product help the customer

Think about what sets your offerings apart from others, too. For example, what features can you offer that no one else can? Try to think about the customer’s daily life and how your product fits into your routine.

Consider the pain points they experience on a daily basis. What pain point can your product or service solve? Find ways to show customers that only you can remedy their specific pain point.

If you stand out from competitors, consumers will learn to rely on you before anyone else.

Determining the consumer’s pain points will help you better understand the goals. Then, you can determine how you can accomplish those goals for them.

Once you understand the consumer’s pain points and goals, you can frame your key benefits and features. Highlighting these areas in your marketing strategy will help you attract customers.

2. Research Competitors

Remember, you’ll want to make sure your business stands out from the rest. If you want to develop a strong target marketing strategy, research the competition. Understanding how your competitors reach customers can help improve your own marketing plan.

You can also determine which target audiences your competitors are neglecting. Then, you can focus on that audience group. You’ll find new opportunities to generate leads and sales as a result.

Check out each competitor’s website and social media page. Review their content and messaging. Ask yourself who they’re trying to reach.

Try to determine:

• How they segment their target audience
• Who their “ideal” customers are
• How they promote products/services
• The language they use (professional, witty, etc.)
• How often they post

Think about each competitor’s strengths and weaknesses, too. Are they appealing to multiple audience groups? Does their messaging fall flat?

Once you have this data, you can start segmenting your own target audience.

3. Gather Audience Research

Once you gather the necessary research, you can start learning more about your customers. Think about the demographics or psychographics that suit your niche.

Consider getting started by sending out a survey to your existing customers or a small focus group. Otherwise, look at your website’s Google Analytics. Reviewing the analytics could help you determine who your customers are.

As you gather audience research, consider their:

• Values
• Goals
• Pain points
• Age
• Gender
• Location
• Marital status
• Household income
• Language
• Education
• Buying behaviors
• Online behaviors
• Interests
• Hobbies

Once you determine who your existing customers are, you can focus on customer segmentation.

4. Start Segmenting

Determine how you want to segment each persona. For example, you might focus on different age groups. Think about how different groups respond to the same pain point.

For example, a mother of five children might have different priorities over a single, male college student.

Try to make sure each buyer person is distinct and specific. After all, consumers don’t like generalized messaging. In fact, 74% of people get annoyed when content has nothing to do with their interests.

Over 50% will switch brands if a company fails to personalize communications.

Personalization based on customer segmentation could help you generate more leads and sales. In fact, 50% of consumers will pay more when brands do a good job of providing personally relevant content.

Personalizing your marketing strategy could boost your ROI by eight times, too.

Think about each group’s lifestyle factors, attitudes, and values as well. Understanding their lifestyle can help you develop more accurate groups.

5. Consider Exclusions

Once you create your groups, think about your marketing strategy. You might find there are certain attributes you want to exclude while marketing.

Creating exclusions can ensure you don’t spend time or money on the wrong customers. Otherwise, your messages might reach the wrong audience. You could start generating low-quality leads that never convert into sales.

6. Analyze and Adjust

Once you segment your target audience, start developing your marketing strategy with each group in mind. Then, analyze the results of your campaigns. Determine if customers are responding to your new marketing messages.

Take a look at your Google Analytics and determine if your website visitors fall within the buyer personas you created. Determine if you’re generating leads and sales based on your new groups, too.

You can also use a customer data platform to optimize your targeting and messaging.

Analyzing your data will help you make adjustments to your buyer personas. Then, you can fine-tune your messaging and generate more results.

Know Your Audience: 6 Tips for Effective Customer Segmentations

Make sure your marketing strategy appeals to your ideal customers this year. Get started with these customer segmentation tips. Then, adjust your marketing plan for 2022 based on your ideal customers.

With these tips, you can focus more time and energy on the consumers who are most likely to convert into sales.

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