How To Do A Step-By-Step Market Segmentation

Market Segmentation : To understand how to make a market segmentation, you can see it as a process that goes from the general to the particular: you have to first know the broadest possibility that you can reach with your product, and from there begin to refine the selection, because the important thing is that you find the ideal audience for your business.

Done correctly, market segmentation will help you focus your marketing efforts on the right people, at the right time, and for the right situations. In this way, your strategies will be more successful because you will speak to your leads and customers in a personalized way, which will create much closer and more meaningful relationships between your brand and the people who benefit from your solutions.

Below, we share the steps that are necessary to perform a market segmentation.

How To Do A Market Segmentation

Segment your total market

In order for it to be possible for you to start segmenting your market into smaller and more specialized ones, you need to do a study that shows you what your current customers are or, if it is a product or business to be launched, your competition.

It is possible that this first filter throws you a fairly wide audience, depending on your business, but it is from here that you will have a better perspective to apply the criteria or variables that are needed for market segmentation.

We refer to:

• Demographics (such as age, gender, language spoken, marital status).
• Geographical (if they live within the same country or in an international environment, how is the population, the climate, the natural risks, the type of transport within their reach).
• Psychographic (interests, economic scope, lifestyle, political affiliations).
• Behavioral (when they buy, where they buy, which method they prefer to use, the problems they seek to solve with a product).

This way, you’ll be able to glimpse how many market segments may be interested in your brand. Once you have them, save them so that you can modify them over time, as there are features that will evolve as audiences undergo changes and that you should not overlook if you want to continue being relevant.

Choose the target market

Now you are facing a fork in the road: each segmented market presents different opportunities. Analyze then the moment in which your brand, product or service is, how many of those audiences you can target on that occasion with an attractive value proposition and if it is worth using your efforts in several or it is preferable to start with only one.

When it comes to a novelty, whether it’s the first time you venture with your product or you’re about to make a launch that should shine among your existing catalog, it’s best to focus on a target market. You know that it is the right one because the criteria that make it up show that your offer understands the pain points you want to solve and the personality of the brand is related to yours.

Select the target audience

From that target market you will select your target audience. Here you will no longer see only criteria, but particular behaviors, contexts in which they move and the emotions that accompany their decision-making: the challenges they face for their profession, the celebrities they admire and follow, the information they share publicly with their contacts, the brands that reflect their lifestyle and values, and the relationship he already has with your business or product 

You’ll have the data to create content that really has an impact on how it interacts with your brand, from a blog post to that special offer that you’ll feel was tailor-made for you (because it really is). You can also perform more specialized divisions, known as “market hyper segmentation.”

Thanks to this type of understanding of your target audience is that you will find better results in your marketing campaigns.

Create the ideal marketing strategy for your target audience

At this stage, other aspects come into play that need that information that market segmentation gives you: the channels you have to use to talk to your target audience, the tone of the communication that identifies with it and the content that will attract them and add value to their day to day.

If you realize that you have more than one buyer persona that is worth sending messages to at the same time, the variety of channels (even within a single type, such as social networks) allows you to segment more wisely, because you must adapt the content so that it is better used. It is not the same what you will publish in a blog than in a tweet, and not only because of the number of characters that each platform allows, but because the audience that is on Twitter is looking for something completely different from those that come to your website through a newsletter or a backlink.

This translates, within your strategy, that you must analyze what happens in each channel and how it impacts the advertising campaign.

Apply the actions you designed

Finally, you will have a spectrum of actions that you can use in all your target audiences, according to the channel and the objective that best suits each of them.

Take advantage of tools that allow you to manage your campaigns from one place, such as a CRM, and give you access to targeted audiences that fit the ones you’ve created, such as Facebook ads or Google Ads.

Measure your performance

Remember that the most effective advertising is the one that appears when the person has more desires or needs to find it, so we recommend that you analyze the reactions and conversions you achieved with your efforts.

No one is perfect and you can always improve, so take your successes and mistakes as lessons that will refine your next strategies. If the study that helped you create your market segmentations is well supported, you shouldn’t have bad numbers. But if it is, it is necessary to review the first step and find where adjustments need to be made.

And another important thing we’ve already mentioned: your target markets and audiences can continue to grow and nurture, transform, and adapt over time. So save them, differentiate them with a name, and come back to them with your marketing strategies. Your business will also grow with them, that’s the ideal goal.