Market segmentation is a fundamental practice in marketing aimed at dividing a vast and homogeneous market of potential customers into distinct segments that can be easily identified. This division is based on specific criteria or shared characteristics, which result in customers having similar product needs. Segments consist of individuals likely to respond similarly to marketing strategies as they share common interests, needs, wants, and demands.
In today’s business landscape, the reality is that most companies need to possess sufficient resources to target the mass market effectively. As such, it becomes crucial for them to focus their efforts on specific market segments that genuinely require their products or services. This is where market segmentation comes into play, allowing businesses to divide the market into similar and identifiable segments.
Completing your digital marketing training at Cumberland College positions and identifies you as a valuable resource for helping businesses effectively reach their target audiences, and segmentation is a crucial aspect of successful digital marketing. In this blog post, we highlight four types of segmentation you should remember after your digital marketing training.
1. Demographic Segmentation
After your digital marketing training, you can use demographic segmentation to group your customers or subscribers by their personal and socio-economic traits. These traits include age, gender, marital status, family size, income, education, race, occupation, nationality, and religion.
For instance, a clothing brand might use demographic segmentation to offer different styles and sizes to other age groups and genders. Demographic segmentation lets you know your target market better and match your marketing messages and offers to their specific needs and preferences. You can also mix demographic segmentation with others to make more fine-tuned and targeted segments. One benefit of demographic segmentation is that the data is easy and cheap to get and analyze. The market segmentation process involves identifying the segmentation variables and criteria, segmenting the market based on these variables, profiling and analyzing the segments, selecting target segments, and developing marketing strategies for each segment.
2. Behavioural Segmentation
Behavioural segmentation involves the practice of categorizing customers into distinct groups based on the behaviours they display when engaging with a brand. This segmentation approach focuses on grouping individuals according to various behavioural aspects, including their:
- Buying patterns
- Spending patterns
- Browsing patterns
- Brand interactions
- Brand loyalty
- Product opinions
Businesses can collect objective information about customer behaviour by utilizing website analytics and other data sources. This data analysis can also be useful for predicting how customers will likely interact with the brand. Once behavioural segments are identified, businesses can leverage these insights to provide personalized recommendations and address the specific needs of each customer segment.
3. Understand Psychographic Segmentation After Digital Marketing Training
Psychographic segmentation focusses on psychological and emotional characteristics, setting it apart from demographic segmentation. While demographics are observable, psychographics provides valuable insights into your audience’s motives, preferences, and needs. Understanding these aspects enables you to create content that resonates more effectively with your target audience throughout your digital marketing career. Psychographic characteristics include personality traits, interests, beliefs, values, attitudes, and lifestyles.
Unlike demographics, which can be easily categorized based on objective data, psychographic segmentation delves into the subjective aspects of consumer behaviour. Analyzing psychographic factors helps you better understand why individuals make certain purchasing decisions or exhibit specific preferences.
4. Geographic Segmentation
Geographic segmentation is a simple yet highly effective strategy for dividing your market based on location. Understanding a customer’s geographical location allows for better comprehension of their needs and facilitates the delivery of location-specific advertisements.
The simplest form of this segmentation type involves identifying users based on their country, state, county, and zip code. Additionally, consumers can be categorized based on the characteristics of their residing area, including climate, population density, and urban, suburban, or rural classification. Achieving specificity may require further identification of distinguishing characteristics since a single county can encompass diverse rural, suburban, and urban areas.
Segmenting a market by location is crucial when targeting advertisements in a particular area, especially for promoting small local businesses. It is also valuable when targeting a broader region as it enables the customization of messaging to cater to regional differences in language, interests, norms, and other attributes. Further, it allows for addressing the distinct needs of individuals across various regions.
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