Target Your Ideal Customer Using These 4 Segmentation Strategies

Today’s marketing is data-driven. That means acquiring and wielding good data is increasingly critical in building a successful business. And, in the realm of data-driven marketing, segmentation is the backbone.

Segmentation, when done right, gives marketers the ability to isolate their prospective customers from the rest of the crowd. From there, these groups can be further separated and content can be tailored to the needs of each prospective customer.

But where do you start? And what tactics should you use to ensure that your segmentation is both accurate and effective? This post shows you where to begin and how to refine your segmentation to not only create the best experience for your leads, but also the best conversion rates for your organization.

Find the Titles of Your Target Audience

The first step to successful segmentation is to find the titles that your target audience may be listed under.

Many people might sign up for your mailing list, but not all of them are prospective customers. For example, when you write posts about content marketing, many blog writers will read the content you put out, but they can’t make the call to purchase your offering.

That’s why one of the first, easiest and most important steps when segmenting your audience is to do it by title. Here are a couple methods to aid you in finding the proper titles to split your audience.

Use Current Customer Websites

Look at those who have already purchased from you. Go to their contact page or employee information page. Look at the person who initiated the purchase from your business and determine their title.

This is a great launching point. Use the titles you collected like “Marketing Manager” to figure out who in your database has the equivalent expertise to buy your product.

Use LinkedIn Profiles

Another wonderful tactic to determine the titles of your prospective customer is to use LinkedIn. You can return to your current customers if you’d like, but don’t be afraid to explore the profiles of other professionals to find any and all titles that your prospects may be using.

Now that you have the titles of your future customers, it’s time to break them into even smaller groups.

Find Their Specialties

Depending on the nature of your offering, you will often find that even those with the same title might have different specialties. They might even be from different industries.

Vet out this information using the same tactics I mentioned above. Browse through the websites and social profiles of your prospective customers and figure out what each of them cares about.

From here, it’s important for you build a series of characters who make up your customers.
 

Create Personas

Now that you have all this information about your customers, it’s time to create a range of buyer personas that generally covers each personality you are targeting.

For example, you may have a marketing manager that is the 45-year-old professional who has been in the industry for years. He is new to a lot of the modern marketing technologies but is making the effort.

Then you might have a young marketing manager, who is around 25 and is the definition of a digital native. They may have less experience, but they make up for it with their ability to adapt to all new marketing technology.

These two groups have the same title, but entirely different demographics and areas of expertise, which is why you need to go deeper than just the title. The content you create should be tailored to each of these personalities or it will fall flat.

Question Your Personas

When you are segmenting, it’s important to figure out how these groups relate to you and your brand. This means asking a handful of questions to deepen your knowledge of each of these groups and allow you to create meaningful content for them.

You should ask some of the following:

• What need does your product fill?
• How does it help your persona do their job?
• What does their daily job entail?
• What threats do they face in their work lives?
• What does their boss ask them about?

These questions can often be answered by using the relevant social media profiles of your current and future customers. You might also ask to interview current customers, to find out why they bought from you and therefore, what need your product fills.

Having a deep understanding of what motivates each of your personas will make it easier to know what content to create and who should receive it. By following these steps, you’ll have a better idea of who is in your database and how to help guide them towards the sale more efficiently.

 
What tactics are you using for segmentation? Were they on this list? What else would you add? Let us know in the comments.