Market segmentation defines a market piece (slice) you believe can turn into a target market; one you tackle more compellingly than any competitor. It rests on meeting with selling prospects that you can reach easily, communicate with effectively, and, given the intensity of competition, derive acceptable profit from business activities.<\/p>\n
Market Segmentation and the Customer Experience (CX)<\/h2>\n
Every ROI-centric company, large-enterprise or SMB, strives to deliver the perfect CX. The latter is the elixir for achieving customer retention built around brand loyalty. It ensures maximum revenue for the lowest CX investment.<\/p>\n
Conversely, if it goes wrong and all one gets is customer churn, profitability is likely to tank.<\/p>\n
Market segmentation is the methodology that promises a high probability of customer loyalty and not falling into the traps that let it slip away.<\/p>\n
The critical thing to understand about CX is that it’s not one experience at a single point of time, but the overall emotional, mental, and physical gratification after passing through several touch points before buying (and not claiming a refund) for a service or product. It’s commonly referred to as the customer journey.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Here’s the thing. In modern business environments pressured by intense competition, it’s virtually impossible to deliver a competitively acceptable CX to every group of prospects that meets your fancy. Market segmentation, if applied professionally and with creativity, spotlights:<\/p>\n An Analogy\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Think of it this way. You’re a photographer working for conversationalists that relocate endangered wild animals in Africa. One of the rarest is an endangered zebra that’s hard to distinguish from regular zebras. <\/span><\/p>\n With your sight on your target, you take your camera climbing up into the trees. There you click away from a high vantage point. After that, you take shots on the ground from the front, back, and sides. For good measure, you lie waiting in a depression to capture an image from underneath. You get pics of the rarity merging with a regular herd and moving away to graze separately. You pick up on its peculiar habits and behavior over days and nights using infra-red lenses. You can see when it’s jumpy and more relaxed in its journey through bush life. <\/span><\/p>\n After getting all the pictures and videos together, as a combination, they should confirm that you’re looking at the rare zebra and not something else. You\u2019re positioned to advise your employers on the best way to identify these unique animals, and more importantly, the right time and approach to capturing them for a successful relocation.<\/span><\/p>\n Market segmentation is an exact parallel to the example above. It’s the study of the viable customer and prospect groups:<\/span><\/p>\n Market segmentation takes shots from every possible angle, uses probes to penetrate customer thoughts and emotions, and overviews everything to dissect customer behavior. It gives you a view of touchpoints in the customer journey from end-to-end, providing insight into what’s needed to impress the customer group with a compelling product or service offer. It weeds out the rarities (segments) from the herd (broad marketplace) and shows you how to connect to them in a meaningful way.<\/span><\/p>\n As long as you follow the guidelines of a comprehensive market segmentation program, your team should be able to:<\/span><\/p>\n A. Stay focused on customer groups that count and provide a route with the least resistance<\/span><\/p>\n B. Create marketing messages that:<\/p>\n C. Develop an integrated marketing program by:<\/p>\n Every type of market segmentation gives you a different insight into target markets. It lets you define them in a way that works for your marketing approach, giving you clues on how to beat competitors to the punch.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n The tighter the market segmentation, the better. One alert is this – if it gets too tight, it may lose its profit potential. After all, a single individual is the ultimate segmentation but is unlikely to represent enough buying power to warrant exclusive focus. On the other hand, a single company like John Deere, with enormous financial resources and buying discretion, may constitute a segment in its own right (i.e., for a B2B opportunity).<\/span><\/p>\n We should point out that market segmentation has an immediate inflection point. There are considerable overlaps, but marketers should understand that B2B and B2C situations require somewhat different market segmentation strategies. The influencers, groupings, and dimensions of customer segments follow different patterns generally. That said, a systematic approach pays dividends in both cases.<\/span><\/p>\n Begin by analyzing your existing customer base from digital and paper records in your business. Once that kicks off, it generates new leads that take you to qualitative and quantitative sources readily accessible. The linked article –\u00a0<\/span>a\u00a0<\/span>Sogolytics<\/span>\u00a0exclusive<\/span><\/a>\u00a0<\/span>– covers this subject extensively, When you don’t know where to find things, operations slow down to a snail’s pace, and the exercise sometimes aborts.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Suffice to say that Google and social media like YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Facebook (to name but a few) have developed massive databases and can give you pinpointed market intelligence down to areas as narrow as zip codes. Aside from that, there’s a range of census reports and private market research that possibly relates to your business without you lifting a finger to uncover the same.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n It makes no difference whether you start with existing customer sources or move into new data channels; there\u2019s a logical path to follow.\u00a0At the end of this path, you want to have a customer profile that\u00a0looks at and describes the customer from every perspective. You should be able to naturally identify opportunities for your business that offer ways to protect against competitor intrusion or that <\/span>overwhelm competitors already there. <\/span>You’ll want to test all ideas and initiatives for reliability and predictability.<\/span><\/p>\n Market segmentation is a vast strategic management activity covering numerous facets of achieving competitive stature in selected markets. Sogolytics is a company closely associated with cutting-edge technologies in the market segmentation arena. These include surveys, tests, quizzes – indeed, every moving part that go-ahead marketers need in their armory. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n The exciting thing is that designed templates and software packages as available resources are affordable and the answer to almost every experienced pain. Contact Sogolytics and save yourself an incredible amount of hassle and aggravation when structuring market segmentation strategies in your business. The company knows how to prioritize and channel your efforts for a rewarding experience that is also profitable.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What is Market Segmentation? Ready to make the most of what you’ve got? Using market segmentation means dividing the market into sections so that your view of customers has focus and meaning given your orientations and available resources. The creation of “segments” is the same as setting your eyes on manageable targets made up of customers who conform to the segment parameters and can demonstrate enough buying power to make it worthwhile. Market segmentation defines a market piece (slice) you believe can turn into a target market; one you tackle more compellingly than any competitor. It rests on meeting with selling prospects that you can reach easily, communicate with effectively, and, given the intensity of competition, derive acceptable profit from business activities. Market Segmentation and the Customer Experience (CX) Every ROI-centric company, large-enterprise or SMB, strives to deliver the perfect CX. The latter is the elixir for achieving customer retention built around brand loyalty. It ensures maximum revenue for the lowest CX investment. Conversely, if it goes wrong and all one gets is customer churn, profitability is likely to tank. Market segmentation is the methodology that promises a high probability of customer loyalty and not falling into the traps that let it slip away. The critical thing to understand about CX is that it’s not one experience at a single point of time, but the overall emotional, mental, and physical gratification after passing through several touch points before buying (and not claiming a refund) for a service or product. It’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":5080,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194],"tags":[529,30,32,426],"yoast_head":"\n\n
![\"market](\"https:\/\/www.sogolytics.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Market-Segmentation.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nIdentifying viable market segments and marketing segmentation benefits<\/h2>\n
Market Segmentation Benefits\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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How to utilize market segmentation<\/span><\/h2>\n
Approach Market Segmentation Systematically\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n
B2B versus B2C\u00a0<\/em><\/h4>\n
Data Sources\u00a0<\/em><\/h4>\n
<\/a><\/p>\nMarket Segmentation Types and Developing a Market Segmentation Strategy\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n
Step 1: Geographic Segmentation<\/span><\/h4>\n
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Step 2: Demographic Segmentation<\/span><\/h4>\n
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Steps 3 & 4: Psychographic Segmentation & Behavioral Segmentation<\/span><\/h4>\n
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Step 5: Infographic\u00a0Segmentation<\/h4>\n
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Conclusion<\/h2>\n