Segmentation | Josh Brinkers
Imagine you had a new product to design, or a marketing campaign to run, or a re-brand to coordinate. Imagine you really had to get it right. You’d probably want opinions on the best way forward from those who matter most: consumers. What do they want to see from you?
Now imagine that you’re getting a chance to ask them that very question. All of them. At once.
What’s likely to follow is a torrent of opinions and opposing points of view. Some would buy your product because they love the quality, so you’ll need to push your quality credentials. Some will like your brand’s history, so make sure you talk about your origins. Some would buy from you because it’d make them look cool, so be cool.
Why should you segment your audience?
If you act on every answer you get, you’ll probably end up with something a bit formless. Literally designed by committee. It’s impossible to come up with a product/campaign/re-brand/whatever that pleases every single person who has an opinion on it – especially when you’re working with thousands of those opinions.
So, would it be easier if you were only thinking about a handful of opinions?
We find it is. No matter how incongruent a large group of people appears to be, there will always be trends which a properly conducted consumer segmentation can pull out. By asking the right questions about lifestyle, behaviour and attitudes, you’ll be able to group people by who they are, not just by what they say.
This goes well beyond simple data cuts. For example, people who say ‘value for money’ is important to them when shopping could be motivated by low income, or a sense of satisfaction that comes from savvy purchases, or a dislike of flashy brands. These people might look similar in a set of data tables, but they’d all respond differently to the same marketing campaign focused around value depending on its pitch
Leveraging segmentation for effective customer targeting
Segmentation works to streamline disparate and chaotic groups into the broader ‘stereotypes’ that exist within. From there you can work to please whichever stereotypes you want to target as if they were real individuals, because chances are high that you’ll please anyone who fits those stereotypes too.
“Some segmentations work to understand what sort of person is most likely to be a brand’s customer within the general population, while others can work to see the types of customers a brand already has.”
We’re regulars when it comes to this sort of research, and always find the pen portraits we produce resonate with our clients – they usually know exactly the sort of people we’re talking about, but have never been able to define them before. It gives them a sense of focus and understanding of their customer base that only a few other research methods can match, and can help to tailor products and communications towards the exact people they want to respond to them.
A great example was a multi-country segmentation we created for a leading baby care brand. This was an in-depth piece that allowed our client to visualise and target clear types of parent who existed in their key markets, defining their needs, priorities and motivations. It allowed us to calculate the size of the financial opportunity each parent type represented and demonstrate opportunities for targeted communication and NPD.
While this was a detailed project that took months, there is also the possibility of lighter segmentations that can be completed in weeks. While we’d argue segmentations are worth putting as much time into as possible, we have experience of intensive projects requiring fast turnarounds that have produced incredibly useful results.
Ultimately, segmentations demonstrate that no consumer is only skin-deep – get in touch with us if this feels like something that you’d like to explore further.