If you’re a new player in the business arena, you can probably attest to how difficult it is to earn customers. There are a lot of companies that have been in the business for years, and you can’t simply penetrate that easily. You have to get through a lot of challenges before your business can attain success. But you don’t have to lose hope.
There are a lot of ways in which a new business owner like you can earn customers, and this is aided by audience segmentation. This strategy is helpful to all business owners, no matter what industry they’re operating in.
To learn more about audience segmentation and how it can do wonders for your business, continue to read on through this article.
But first, what is Audience Segmentation and why is it important?
As the name suggests, audience segmentation is basically about dividing a large audience into smaller ones to identify customers based on their needs, characters, and values. This is helpful for any business because once you’ve segmented your audience, it’ll be easier for you to determine your customers and how you could satisfy them.
It’s hard to do that if you’re considering every single human being on the planet as your customer, right? Aside from knowing who your customers are, audience segmentation is also powerful for your business because:
- It can help you build better customer personas: You can go from knowing a customer as a mere “male, 23 years old, living in Hawaii” to a “male, who loves hip-hop, interested in a career in social media, loves to travel and has a travel blog” real quick. This kind of information is important so you’ll know how to communicate effectively with these types of customers.
- It can help design your content precisely: Once you know who your customers are, you’ll know how to provide content that is appropriate for them. If your segmented audience is young professionals who are very active through their social media accounts, you can promote your business on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter. It’ll be easier for you to know what to offer and how you could get your point across.
- It can help you track the effectiveness of your marketing efforts: Since you know who your customers are, and you’ve sorted them out from the masses, it’ll be simpler for you to track if your marketing efforts were appealing to them or not. For example, if your product is designed for married couples, and you’ve been paying numerous marketing ads to reach them, you’ll know if your efforts are effective if you’ve been gaining more customers.
So how can you conduct Audience Segmentation for your business?
Since you’re now reading this part of the article, you might have already understood how important audience segmentation is to any business. It can rake in profits, improve customer relationships and save financial resources spent on marketing campaigns. But you should first be able to conduct audience segmentation successfully in your business before you can attain any of those goals. And you can do that by:
- Gathering your audience’s profile and analyzing audience information: Take the time to gather the information of your audience’s profile. Think of who your services or products are for and what could be the possible risks for their decision to buy or not. Determine which is best suited for your business. Weigh the pros and cons of what will happen if ever you choose a specific target audience.
- Choosing your target audience: Since you’ve carefully reviewed your audience’s profile, you can now decide on who is your target audience – the people you’re focusing on and who you think will contribute to your business’ success.
- Deciding whether to segment or not: You’ve sorted out your audience, and now it’s time for you to decide whether or not you’re still going to segment these. All of your target audience can work as your potential customers, but if you believe that the same messages will not fit your audience, segmentation can help. Your financial resources are deciding factors, too.
- Segmenting your audience by establishing criteria: After you’ve gathered information and decided whether to segment or not, it’s now time for you to segment your audience based on certain criteria. This criterion can include:
- Psychographics
- Behaviours
- Demographics
- Geographic locations
Once your criteria are set, you now have to decide which particular audience goes where. This information will then help you come up with effective marketing campaigns appropriate for your segmented audience.
Takeaways
Audience segmentation is obviously essential for your business. Your business processes will seem easier once you’re able to maximize what audience segmentation can do. You can gain more customers and eventually increase your profit as well. And while there are a lot of things involved in the audience segmentation process, you don’t have to rush to do all of these.
On the contrary, you should take the time to study this concept and how it can help your business in the long run. Slow and steady is the best way to go when you want to inject something into your business. You should test the waters first and be patient enough to see any improvement. Success doesn’t come overnight, and the same principle applies once you adapt it to audience segmentation.
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