Segment Custom Audiences

Audience segmentation is the process of finding strategic subgroups within your target audience, based on shared behaviors, interests, or attributes that indicate how they will respond to marketing. Then, you can tailor your marketing mix to those more manageable subgroups, also called segments. 

Here are a few of benefits of audience segmentation:

Define your best customers: Often, specific segments of your customer base are responsible for an outsize share of the revenue. For example, 40 percent of Slack’s revenue comes from less than 1 percent of its customer base. By identifying the segments, you can seek out more customers that fit that profile.

Discover new opportunities in the market: The process of defining your best customers can surface opportunities you weren’t expecting. Take Pedialyte, the baby rehydration drink that saw a 60% increase in adult use from 2012 to 2015, as they nursed hangovers. They eventually released a sparkling drink in 2018 to better appeal to that demographic.

Create more specific and relevant messaging: When you market to everyone, messaging gets too vague and ends up becoming completely forgettable. By segmenting your audience, you can understand what each segment needs from you and create messaging that directly addresses the problems they face. For example, Nike is going to speak differently to athletes, people who watch sports, dedicated sneakerheads, and people who wear athletic clothing for comfort.

A strong audience segmentation strategy will get you these results and ensure you are using your marketing resources efficiently. But first, you need to understand the different types of segmentation and when they are most useful.

Types of audience segmentation 

There is so much to learn about each customer in your audience. To make sense of it all, it helps to understand how each attribute fits into the bigger picture and helps you communicate more effectively.

You can use a simple framework with three types of audience segmentation techniques:

Demographics focus on who your customers are

Psychographics focus on how your customers think

Behaviors focus on how your customers decide to buy

Any attribute in these three categories can be used to slice and dice the entire audience if your data set is robust enough. But choosing the best one for the job depends on your goal and audience. 

A better way to segment your audience

It’s possible to take a scrappier approach to audience segmentation, but the tools you have access to will greatly impact your ability to collect and process your data.

Here are some common audience segmentation tools:

• Google Analytics: Google Analytics is a web-based tool that allows you to research and segment your audience using basic parameters like demographics, on-site behavior, and how they found your website.
• Survey tools: Survey tools allow you to conduct the necessary audience segmentation research and analyze the results.
• All-in-one CRM tools: The most robust customer relationship management (CRM) tools can track a variety of ways that customers and prospects engage with your marketing. You can record these interactions and use them to segment your communications.
• Audience intelligence platforms: Research platforms like Helixa can provide a 360-degree view of your audience (or any audience) in minutes. You can move quickly and discover insights you would’ve never known to look for. A tool like Helixa is especially useful if you have a portfolio of products or a roster of clients that all need their own analyses.