Working in the industry teaches you a lot. You learn the fundamentals of social media, how to execute plans, and how to choose which platform is best.
Now, the thing there is no shortage of, is talk of the growth in social. It’s been the “year of social media” for the past few years. Websites such as Market Me have been leading the way in the latest social media news and insights. We know Pinterest users are mainly women. We witnessed the rise of Instagram. We saw Snapchat introduce its ad formats.
In short, we know a lot about social media.
One thing I’ve witnessed with some clients, is them not matching up consumer profiles with social and digital techniques. Many businesses only delve into the basics. What time should we post our content? What platform should we use? Is a blog better than Facebook? These are often the extent some businesses go to when planning social media marketing.
Perhaps it’s because many agencies will do most of the work, or perhaps smaller businesses aren’t sure how to match their target audience with social media and digital marketing. Either way, small businesses need to be able to properly segment their customers for digital marketing otherwise the risk and potential waste is far too high.
In a piece of work I did for the dsmmcm1415 project I’m working on, my team and I looked at segmentation approaches for one of our clients. Below are the four most important segmentation approaches.
- Behavioural – Based on consumer behaviour. Consumers are divided into groups based on behaviours, including search terms and website visits.
- Locational:Segmenting the market by targeting a restricted geographic area.
- Psychographic – Segmentation based on the intangible variables such as beliefs and values.
- Relationship with company, segmenting based on where the customer is in the customer lifecycle.
For most clients, we found search terms and location to be the most cost effective ways of targeting consumers. Behaviourally targeted advertising has the best conversion rates of any other method. Businesses who want conversions, not just web traffic would need to use behavioural segmentation above all other methods. Locational, combined with behavioural allows you to create a really granular segment for the most cost effective segmentation.
However the other segmentation approaches shouldn’t be completely overlooked. By evaluating consumers relationship with your company, you can focus on building brand loyalty y tailoring messages to different levels of consumer. Psychogrpahics can be used to align niche products with their consumers values and beliefs and you can create communications to those specifically with the lifestyles which match your products.
It may be something you always consider. But many businesses don’t emphasise segmentation in digital marketing. You can use these techniques to create some really granular target audiences, take our segmentation report for example.
Segmentation is key when planning digital communications. This is clear. Let us know how you segment and profile your customers when planning digital,