How to Properly Segment Your Target Audience

In the past, you may have been able to get away with focusing just on your product and its benefits, but your target audience likely has evolved. Its members now expect -- even demand – content that is more personalized and targeted to their specific needs. They're no longer responding to generic messaging.

Savvy customers are looking for products and services that meet their specific needs and situations. The good news is that you can join the 91% of market leaders who already use audience segmentation to create personalized marketing campaigns and increase their conversion rates.

Segmentation is just a way to organize data about your prospects and customers based on similarities between groups. Once your audience is segmented, you can make your messaging more relevant and personalized for each group based on their shared characteristics. You can segment your list with surveys, phone calls and social media analysis. Here are five factors to use in segmenting your audience.

1. Demographic data - One of the most common ways to segment your audience is with statistical data related to a population. Demographic data can include features such as age, gender, education, occupation, marital status and income.
2. Psychographic info - Segment your list further by asking questions about the attitudes and opinions of your contacts. Psychographic segmentation allows you to surmise some of the reasons that motivate consumers to buy.
3. Lifestyle - Audience segmentation involves digging into more than just psychological motivation. You can also segment your contacts according to lifestyle. What are their interests? What are their activities or hobbies? What lifestyle choices have they made that will open them up to your targeted campaign?
4. Beliefs and values - Tap into what your prospects and clients value the most. That segmentation factor offers important insights into how your contacts perceive your brand and product, and how they perceive advertising in general. By understanding what your audience sees as important and valuable, you're able to target your messaging with the value proposition that will be attractive to each segment.
5. Behavior - Your audience members can and will tell you a great many details about what they do, who they are and what they think. The behavior variable, though, offers specific details about their buying behavior. You can learn what they buy, how often and to what extent. Audience segmentation based on behavior delves deeper than simple wishing and hoping and planning; the data relates to specific products they've purchased.

Audience segmentation is a powerful marketing tool, allowing you to reach your target audience in ways that connect you to your customers and prospects. By now, you know you've got to do it, but you may feel a bit overwhelmed. How will you start your segmentation process? What's the first step and whom can you rely on for help?

Fortunately, O360 offers expert advice and recommendations about audience segmentation. The O360 platform can help you determine the segmentation factors that are most important to your audience. It can help you gather the data, segment it properly and understand how to target your messaging to your segments based on your marketing goals. To learn more about the O360 platform and how we can help, sign up for a demo today!