How to Effectively Segment Your Target Consumers

by Aditya

Starting your Segmentation

We can’t all satisfy everybody, it is a rule of thumb. It does not matter which business you are in, not everyone can be targeted. The total number of potential customers will only get smaller when targeting a niche market.

However, not only will great segmentation help marketers to target the right people, but it will also provide the fundamental elements in steering the business in the right direction. To know where the business is heading to.

So, how can one target and segment its target market more effectively?

There are several consumer segmentation strategies to consider, in which the more behaviourally-rooted one is the most popular one, as it delivers tangible values to the bottom line of businesses. Here are consumer segmentation strategies to consider:

1. Geographic/Location

The first-stage of your consumer segmentation is to acknowledge the fact that your business is most likely bound to geographic location. Therefore, it is relevant to target the people within the location your business operates in. Narrow down the total number of target customers based on the country, region/state, city and population density.

2. Demographics and Socioeconomics

This is the most-common form of segmentation, segmentation of people based on their gender, age, income and even their education level. This segmentation should be aligned with type of product or service you offer.

3. Life Stage

Another technique that you can use is to group them based on their life stages. Whether it be marriage, their teen period, or maybe as individualists. You may even break down these life stages to a much more specific level, example, being married with just one kid or being married with two kids. This is to take note of things like parents differing their behaviour, as well as treatment, between each child.

4. Usage

Take a look into other variables such as the time and place in which the consumption occurs to give you a clear sense of the weight of potential customers (valuable or less valuable) or the usage frequency.

5. Psychographics

Segmentation of people based on their unique characteristics, such as values, interests and personality. This grouping will create a much more personal connection between you and your target customers.

6. Behavioural

This grouping is based on consumer ‘footprints’, how they react to things and what their day is like. You will have to identify things such as their product and category usage, how they react to price and other variables. What do they do in the morning? How is their daily media consumption?

7. Tribal/Ethnic

Tribal culture and ethnic pride plays a huge role in the Asian (or South-East Asia) society. Grouping consumers based on the tribe or ethnicity in which they identify themselves in gives you a glimpse of how different the preferences of each ethnic group can be.

Conclusion

As mentioned before, segmentation and targeting should not only be acknowledged and understood by the marketing team, but rather the whole business as it will give direction to the business itself.

There should be a common agreement amongst stakeholders of who to target to. Here are things that you need to ask in the boardroom with other departments or stakeholders meeting in order to validate your segmentation:

  1. Profitability: Is the segment we prioritize big and profitable enough?
  2. MECE rule: Are the selected segments mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive?
  3. Accessibility: Are we able to reach this segment? How?
  4. Relevance: From the customer’s point of view, would they agree to be identified or segmented as such?
  5. Stability: How and when will this segmentation be evolving? And how should we update or react on that?