The businesses we work with all have a good understanding of who their primary audience is and the types of messaging that works best when trying to motivate that audience to take an action. As audiences demand a more personalized experience from businesses, single lines of messaging aren’t resonating as well as they used to. In our experience, audience segmentation often produces higher engagement rates, leading to more sales. Consumer segments in marketing are nothing new, but it’s becoming more and more necessary to create unique messaging for multiple audiences to signal that shoppers can trust your business to provide the right solution to their specific needs.
How do I know if audience segmentation is the right solution for me?
Audience segmentation can help infuse new success to your existing marketing strategy, and it should be an included component of any new marketing approach or campaign rollout. These are the signals we look for that tell us there’s a need for audience segmentation:
You’ve got a diverse customer base across many products and services
Having multiple products or services that cater to a wide range of demographics, psychographics, or behavioral characteristics makes segmentation a must-have. You need to address the unique needs and preferences of each group, so consider how many distinct segments you should be addressing based on the issues that your goods and services help them solve.
Customers have varying needs that require unique approaches
If customer feedback, surveys, or reviews indicate a range of different needs, preferences, or pain points, segmentation can help you translate your messaging into the language customers are using to find the products or services they need to meet these varied requirements. Different customers may use the same product in different ways, so consider the needs that are being met for these individual groups, as well.
When visitors aren’t engaging with your messaging or content
When certain marketing campaigns perform exceptionally well with some audience groups but not with others, your messaging might be too broad or not adequately targeted. You can retain the momentum and equity you’ve built with the audiences that engaged with the first group, and create new audience segments with tailored messaging for any audiences you missed.
You need to know why conversion rates are declining
A drop in conversion rates might indicate that your marketing messages aren't resonating with potential customers. Segmentation can help refine your messaging to better appeal to target audiences, and help you pinpoint specific groups within your potential customer pool that may need more engagement before they make a purchase.
High customer churn rate makes predicting revenue difficult
When customers don’t feel like their needs are being met, it might be because you're not addressing the specific needs of different customer segments. Tailored messaging and offers can help reduce churn by simply showing those customers you understand the unique issues they face, making them more confident that they are making the right purchase.
You’re not getting back what you’re spending on marketing
If you're spending a lot on marketing but not seeing a proportionate return on investment (ROI), it might be because your efforts aren't adequately targeted. Segmentation can help optimize budget allocation, so you can spend on higher value audiences that offer better returns.
Your competitors are starting to apply pressure
If competitors are successfully targeting niche segments within your market, it's a sign that you might need to refine your segmentation strategy to stay competitive. It’s a best practice to keep an eye on what competitors are doing with their marketing so that you can emulate strategies that are working. If you see new audiences gravitating towards a competitor’s similar product or service, study the messaging that resonates with this new group to create your own version touting your business’s unique benefits.
There are plans to expand
If your business is planning to introduce new products or expand into new markets, audience segmentation can help identify and target potential customer groups effectively. It also ensures that shifts or changes in messaging to appeal to these new groups don’t impact or confuse leads or customers that are already engaged with your brand.
Sales and service teams are getting new feedback from customers
If customer service or sales teams receive varied queries or feedback from different customer groups, it indicates diverse needs that segmentation can address.
These teams can provide both anecdotal and analytical data to help choose the right messaging to pinpoint leads or customers that have higher lifetime value.
Growth is stagnant
If your business experiences stagnant growth or plateaus in sales, it’s a good time to re-evaluate your audience segments and tailor your marketing strategies accordingly. You can identify the business that generates the most lifetime value to create messaging that helps expand and convert this group at a higher rate.
Innovations in data collection and analysis are making your approach outdated
If you have access to detailed customer data but aren't using it to its full potential, customer audience segmentation can help leverage this data to gain insights and refine marketing strategies. We also like to make sure data is inclusive of any KPIs that benefit the sales teams that may be helping identify and target these new audiences.
When we are advising marketing executives, we advise them to look for these signs as indicators that audience segmentation can help them create more effective marketing campaigns, achieve a better ROI, and have enhanced customer satisfaction. Creating unique messaging based on audiences, whether they be different people or the same individuals in different stages of the buyer journey, helps make marketing programs more efficient and more impactful.
These are the components we include in every audience segmentation plan
So how do you even begin the process of splitting an audience you may have spent years constructing into different segments? Our advice is to always start with assessing who your current audience is, where you are having success, and which areas need the most improvement. From there, these are the elements that we use when conducting audience segmentation marketing programs for clients.
Conduct comprehensive audience research
Thorough audience research ensures your program is well informed, and that you are working towards measurable goals. Utilize various data sources, tools, and techniques, such as online search studies and surveys, to gather insights about your target audiences. Analytics will help you decipher audience behavior and preferences, guiding your marketing strategies.
Define audience personas
Audience personas are fictional representations of your ideal customers. Creating detailed personas for each audience segment helps shape marketing messaging. For instance, a technology company might have separate personas for IT managers and end-users, each with distinct needs and pain points.
Tailor SEO messaging for multiple audiences
Keyword research will be the foundation of your messaging for each audience segment. Optimize website content and meta tags to align with varying audience interests. Consider creating audience-specific landing pages, ensuring improved SEO performance and a tailored user experience.
Craft compelling PPC and paid media ad copy that makes audiences click
Customized ad copy can significantly enhance PPC campaign performance. Write persuasive ad copy that resonates with various audience segments. Regularly conduct A/B testing to refine messaging and boost ad performance.
Utilize social media for audience engagement
Social media platforms offer a perfect opportunity to engage diverse audiences. Tailor your social media messaging to resonate with different segments. Brands like Nike and Coca-Cola have effectively used social media to connect with varied audiences, showcasing the power of tailored content.
Implement personalization and dynamic content
Personalization is more than just addressing the user by their first name. Use dynamic content to deliver customized experiences, ensuring that the content displayed is relevant to the viewer's segment. Tools like HubSpot and Optimizely can help implement personalization at scale.
Create consistent brand messaging across audiences
Don’t lose your brand identity while trying to speak to new audiences – you want your brand to be perceived as authentic and trustworthy. While tailoring messages, maintain a consistent brand voice. Strategies like creating a brand style guide can ensure your brand's identity remains intact across campaigns. Brands like Apple have mastered this, offering varied products to multiple audiences while maintaining a unified brand image.
Analyze and optimize messaging performance
Our ability to monitor and analyze audience data is always changing, with some recent rules that protect customer information and have altered the very analytics tools that thousands of marketers use every day. But we still have more of an ability to hyper target audiences today than we ever have. And you can still use audience data, like engagement levels, click-through rates, and conversion rates across different audience segments, to track how well messaging resonates across the various audience groups. We’re also seeing great results from tying all this data together to create closed-loop reporting that tells us the true value of these audiences to improve ROI.
Start connecting with your audience on a more personal level
Customers want to know that you understand why they are shopping for your products or services to feel they can trust that you’ll deliver a solution that works. Adding personalization to your marketing strategy will give you the ability to reach more people at a deeper level to win business and ultimately create advocates for your brand. Get in touch with us today, and we’ll show you the audience segmentation solutions we’ve used to help businesses like yours get a better return on their marketing budget. We can help you find a custom solution that works for you.
