What Is the Role of Market Segments in Marketing Strategies?
Some business owners might shy away from market segmentation, believing it will be too difficult, limit their business opportunities or unfairly stereotype their customers. The truth is that market segmentation can be a valuable tool for growing your business and ensuring that each of your clients gets exactly what he needs.
Other People Are Reading
-
Basics of Market Segmentation
-
A market segment, sometimes referred to as a "target market" or "target customer", is a group of people with certain things in common that pertain to your product. A business may serve several market segments and have clients that are far from typical, but in most cases one or two primary customer types make up the majority of a company's desired sales. A market segment is specific: it's a particular kind of person or group, and that group wants your product to fill a certain need. If you sell multicolored knee socks, for example, your target market might be teenage girls.
Moving Beyond Demographics
-
When segmenting a market, it's often simplest to start with demographics: whether your target customers are male or female, how much money they make, where they live, what they do for business and what their family is like. This is a good start for a lot of products, but you will likely find greater value by digging a bit deeper. Target customers have a set of beliefs and values that drive their purchases. They may be interested in a good deal or find greater value in a product's green ecological impact. It's important to understand these motivations to effectively tailor your marketing efforts. For example, if your target market is gregarious teenage girls, they might be more more likely to buy new, novel and fashion-forward knee socks than to worry about the quality of the socks themselves.
-
Tailoring Marketing Strategies
-
Once you know who your primary customers are and the sorts of things they want out of life or need for their businesses, you can tailor your marketing strategies accordingly. Everything from how you deliver your message -- advertisement, newsletter, fact-to-face interaction -- to what you say can be designed to resonate with your clients' own desires. The knee socks business can meet its customers where they spend their time: on social media sites and blogs, cruising the mall and in fashion magazines. Its marketing messages emphasize the funky, special nature of the socks, rather than their quality or price point. The company might even go so far as to make each design a limited edition, meeting the girls' desire for individuality and encouraging prompt and repeat purchases. A secondary target market may require a different set of marketing efforts to communicate to a different set of customer desires.
Benefits of Targeted Marketing
-
When you target your marketing to specific customer segments, you communicate more effectively by addressing the specific desires of the group, rather than relying on each individual to interpret a generic message. You can differentiate yourself from your competitors by showing your target market the specific product qualities that make your company stand out. Each targeted customer feels understood and appreciated, and is more likely to make a purchase, and you aren't wasting time and money with those who have no interest in or use for your services.
-
