Audience segmentation is an essential part of any marketing strategy, as it allows marketers to target potential customers better and create content that resonates with them. By segmenting an audience, marketers can create more effective campaigns and drive more conversions.
In this article, learn more about audience segmentation and how you can use its strategies for your business.
What Is Audience Segmentation?
Audience segmentation is a marketing strategy that divides your audience (stakeholders, customers, employees, etc.) into specific groups based on their characteristics. It enables marketers to create tailored, targeted messages for each segment to increase the likelihood of achieving desired results.
Survey research data of attitudes, beliefs, behaviors and profiling variables are used as the inputs to a process of developing an audience segmentation. Data scientists deploy various advanced analytic techniques to tease out and define the most differentiated groupings within your audience using the survey data.
By understanding and segmenting your key audiences, organizations can develop targeted marketing campaigns, products/services, and experiences that are more likely to reach the right people and have a greater impact.
Why Does Audience Segmentation Matter?
1. Increased ROI
By segmenting your audience into smaller, more targeted groups, you can increase the return on investment (ROI) of your marketing efforts. You can create more tailored campaigns, products, and/or experiences that are better suited to each segment, resulting in better performance and more conversions.
2. Improved Targeting
Audience segmentation allows you to target specific groups of people with specific messages. By understanding the needs and wants of each segment, you can create more effective campaigns that are better tailored to their needs. This allows you to capture more hearts and minds, persuade by reason, and motivate through emotion.
3. Personalized Experience
Audience segmentation also allows you to create a more personalized experience for your target audience. By segmenting your audience, you can create campaigns tailored to each segment’s needs, which can lead to increased support, loyalty and engagement.
What Are the Different Types of Audience Segmentation?
1. Relationship Segmentation
Relationship segmentation is the process of dividing your audience into groups based on the relationship they have with your business or organization. This segmentation can help identify people who are more likely to respond to certain types of messaging or offers. For example, a retail business may target new customers with a promotion to encourage them to make their first purchase, while existing customers may be targeted with loyalty rewards or discounts.
2. Location Segmentation
Location segmentation is the process of dividing customers into groups based on their geographic location. This type of segmentation can be used to create more localized campaigns that are better able to reach and engage audiences in different areas. For example, you may target customers in the same city with an offer of free delivery or a discount code that can only be used in that city.
3. Demographic Segmentation
Demographic segmentation is the process of dividing people into groups based upon who they are demographically. This type of segmentation helps create more effective and tailored campaigns that better meet needs based upon who people are. For example, you may target younger men with sports-related messaging, while reaching older women with beauty and fashion-related messaging.
4. Behavior Segmentation
Purchasing behavior segmentation is a type of audience segmentation that divides customers into different segments based on their behaviors: purchase, advocacy, loyalty, influence, etc.. This is helpful to organizations looking to understand and target people with similar behavior patterns and then plan tailored outreach to segments.
5. Psychographic Segmentation
Psychographic Segmentation is the process of defining audience groups based upon their attitudes, beliefs, and opinions on topics relevant to your industry, organization, or products and services. This allows organizations to identify and reach their supporters, inoculate against detractors, and influence the movable middle. Each segment has a unique psychographic profile relevant to your mission and once defined you can target and tailor your outreach to them.
Final Thoughts
Audience segmentation is an essential part of any marketing strategy. By segmenting their audience, marketers are able to create more effective campaigns, products/services, and experiences that are tailored to each group, better understand audience needs, and identify potential opportunities. In the end, audience segmentation helps marketers to reach their target audience more effectively and efficiently.
If you need an audience segmentation strategy, let our team at Heart+Mind Strategies help you. We are a research-led consulting firm that helps businesses grow through effective strategies. Book a consultation today to get started.