In marketing, it is important to convey the proper message to the appropriate group. With the digitization of many businesses, it has become harder to inspect the behavior of your buyers, therefore, customer segmentation has become harder to implement.
Why is customer segmentation important in digital marketing? To target the different customer group with the appropriate messages, you need to have your customers in segments. To fully comprehend the essence of segmentation to your online marketing drive, you have to understand the concept of 'buyer persona'.
So, what is a buyer persona?
This concept is what is used to describe your ideal customer. It is an important concept in the marketing niche, and it is normal if you've been hearing marketers talk about it. Quite naturally, you should have a couple of buyer personas as their distinctions will help you serve your customers better. Creating them will make you understand your target audience and help you target leads and create business strategies that lead to an increase in sales.
A buyer persona will help contribute further towards a successful customer segmentation strategy. So, when you're creating different templates for the buyer persona, you'll have to consider why and what makes customers purchase from you. You will be looking to obtain insight into what pushes customers to make purchases. Asking questions like the examples below, will provide some of the essential information you need for your buyer persona.
- What do the customers do?
- What age bracket do they fall into?
- How much do they earn?
- Do they have hobbies? If yes, what are their hobbies?
- Where do they reside?
- Do they have goals? Long or short-term or both?
When you find the answers to these questions it will help you understand the ways through which you can approach your customers to deliver a message letting them know that you have what they want and you can provide them with what they need.
Now that you understand what the buyer persona is, how does that help with customer segmentation and how does customer segmentation help with online marketing?
Customer segmentation is when you exploit your buyer persona to divide your audience into various groups. It is very essential in online marketing as a major part of a targeted marketing strategy for your business. Online marketing has empowered end-users more than at any point. It is not shocking that consumers, therefore, can make purchases at a faster rate than before. This has made customer segmentation relevant as it solves the challenge marketers are facing as a result of the empowerment of end-users.
The major challenge marketers face in this digital age is the ability to influence their audience to make the right purchases. They need to understand how to influence the process of purchase that consumers make in the window available. To successfully catch consumers in the process of purchase, they have to understand the way the consumers think and behave.
If you want to segment your customers, below is a couple of key areas to consider.
Past Purchasing Behavior
One of the important things to consider during segmentation is separating previous buyers from new buyers. Regarding previous buyers, you are engaging them based on the existing relationship. This is different from how you will engage new buyers. Customer segmentation from this angle can be distinguished based on the types of products your consumers are purchasing and the pattern of purchase.
More importantly, you should be able to anticipate the future needs of your customers based on the data you've obtained. This way, you get to show them that you recognize their needs even if they haven't realized it yet.
Social Channels
Working out a business strategy with your social channels can help you identify the needs of your customers. When customer segmentation is thrown in the mix, it can go a long way towards you understand who your customers are, their needs and what influences these needs, and how best you can serve them.
With your social channels, you get to understand your customers' interactions with the world around them and how these determine their choices of purchase. This way, you can easily anticipate what their next need will be and bring it to them before they even request it.
Lifestyle
Customer segmentation can be achieved based on the lifestyles, culture, and traits of customers. Sometimes, it is not always easy to get this as concrete information therefore, you might need to use polls and quizzes to find out as much lifestyle information you can about your customers.
In conclusion, customer segmentation is important in online marketing as it helps provide the necessary data you need to optimize sales and convert leads for your business.
