How To Conduct Audience Segmentation 101 For Better Targeting (2021)

If you want your business’s profitability to prosper, you better think of segmentation as a primary solution. Dealing with your business is much easier when you have already determined your customer base. So, let’s have a glimpse of what segmentation of your audience is and how it works.

What is Audience Segmentation?

When you think about audience segmentation, the first thing that comes to mind is the division of a large audience into a smaller one to identify your customers based on their needs, characteristics and even values. All of these are considered while segmenting your audience. In most cases, it’s like doing an audience analysis of your business’s progress. Besides, reaching out to your target customers is one way of boosting your business brand in the long run. As segmentation is utilized as a business strategy, below are the things you should consider to make the most out of your segmentation:

• Audience segmentation successfully identifies your client base.
• Upon knowing your customers’ profile, you’ll be able to create your content accurately and make use of URL anchors that align with their typical searches.
• When you segment your audience, you’ll learn the perfect ways to engage with your customers.
• Segmenting your audience can be one of the best ways to determine the effectiveness of your marketing strategies.
• Segmentation lifts your business’s returns on investments by creating marketing efforts that complement your customers’ needs.

How To Do Segmentation Properly?

When conducting segmentation, your goal is to make segments from a homogenous group of people. Here are the key ways on how to conduct segmentation:

• Gather Your Audience’s Profile and Analyze Audience Information: Once you’re in possession of all your audience’s profile, the next step to take is to review and analyze all your audience information. You can make use of the situation and audience analysis to understand the need for audience segmentation. With this, you can utilize the following as a guide in reviewing the collected information:

1. 1. The effects of the problems to the audience
   2. Demographics and the size of the population
   3. Behaviors, characteristics and values
   4. Psychological data
   5. Other essential information, as needed

• Choose Your Target Audience: To realize your purpose of conducting segmentation, it’s best when you get to choose your target audience. Select your clientele based on the products and services you’re selling. That way, it would be easy to design your contents appropriately. In choosing your audience, you can categorize your clients according to the following categories:

1. 1. First time visitors
   2. Visitors for the second time
   3. Customers
   4. Frequent customers
   5. Visitors who complete a call to action on the site

When you get to know your audience, you’ll eventually perform the segmentation process smoothly.

• Decide If You’ll Segment Or Not: Once you’ve sorted out your audience, decide whether or not  segmentation is needed. You can make a good decision using the information collected during the audience analysis. Use this data to your advantage as it’s also one way of determining the necessity of segmentation. But, here’s the catch! Although your audience has been sorted out, segmentation can only be implemented if this segment could not be reached by the same messages or channels due to individual beliefs or preferences. Another thing is your company’s budget. If you have all the financial resources necessary for the conduct of an audience segmentation, then go for it.
• Segment Your Audience Now By Establishing Your Criteria: When everything runs smoothly from gathering your audience information up to determining your segmentation’s necessity, you can now conduct the segmentation properly. At this point, arrange the categories that you’re planning to put your audience into. This includes:

1. 1. Psychographics – This is all about your audience’s opinions, attitudes, values, preferences, personality, activities, and benefits needed.
   2. Behaviors – When it comes to behaviors, you have to take note your audience’s relevant behavior, consistency of behavior, and their readiness to change the duration of the behavior.
   3. Demographics – Regarding demographics, know your audience’s age, marital status, sex, and income, and education, size of the family, ethnicity, occupation, and others.
   4. Geographic locations – What you’ll understand about geographic locations are the community they live in, region, district, and if they reside in an urban or rural area.

• Analyze What Segment To Target: When you’re done with segmenting your audience based on the categories, you’re just a few steps away from completing the whole process. At this stage, it’s important that you decide on the segment to target as this would be critical in your marketing tactics. With it, you can narrow down your segments into essential ones. Below are the suggestions on how to narrow down your segments:

1. 1. Accessibility – Determine the availability of your segments. Here, you have to make sure that you can reach your segments with the available resources you have at hand. An example of this is your rural audience. If you have ways to ensure the delivery of your messages to your rural audience, then you can keep this segment.
   2. Priorities of your programs – Retain your segment which is suitable to your program priorities. That way, it would be faster to get the behavior change that you want from your target audience. Not just that! It is also easy to handle.

How To Know If Segmentation Has Produced Favorable Results?

After the tremendous process of segmentation, it’s time to see the results. In most cases, implementation of new marketing plans takes place, and from there, you can see how the segmentation impacts your business regarding profit, conversions, and traffic. The better your segmentation is, the higher the profit and conversion rates are.

So if you’re planning to conduct an audience segmentation to target your audience better, make use of these ways to your advantage. If you know how to deal with your audience and the things that will catch them off guard, you’ll be sure to reach the highest heights of business success.