Customer Segmentation and Targeting in the World of Digital Marketing
To efficiently carry out their outreach activities, marketers often look to segment and target their audience and then efficiently position their marketing efforts accordingly. While this approach is widely used in traditional marketing activities, it is tweaked to a slight degree when it comes to digital marketing and plotting the journey of the digital customer.
Digital marketing makes it a little tougher to understand buyer behavior and plot their journey. Therefore, it is a bit harder to segment your target audience and target your brand message accordingly.
Here we go over why segmentation is critical and how to approach customer targeting in the digital world.
And if you get to the end of the article, we have some useful tools to share with you.
Buyer Personas
Buyer Persona is a term that is widely used in marketing and business circles. Simply put, a buyer persona is a description of your ideal customer profile. When you create a few buyer personas, it will be easier for you to better understand your audience, segment them and plan sales strategies accordingly.
If you've never created buyer personas before, now is a good time to start. Begin by visualizing the who can be your most likely customers. Ask yourself questions like -
- What do they do?
- What interests them?
- What are the hobbies they might have?
- What age group are they likely to fall into?
- How much would they earn?
- What are their short-term and long-term goals?
The goal of this exercise is to get an idea of the different channels and methods you can use to reach out to individuals who are most likely to be potential customers of your business.
Audience Segmentation
Audience segmentation is the exercise of segregating your audience into different pools based on criteria like media use, geography, demographics, etc. Digital marketers consider audience segmentation a key component of a targeted marketing strategy.
Audience segmentation takes on added importance in the digital world because the internet has made consumers more empowered than before. Consumers are now making purchasing-related decisions a faster pace than before. Therefore, the challenge for digital marketers is to capture the attention of their potential customers when they are in the process of making a purchasing decision. To be able to accomplish this flawlessly, digital marketers need to fully comprehend the thought process and behavior of their audience.
Previous Purchasing Behavior
Marketers need to segregate their repeat buyers from first-time buyers. This is so that they can plan different engagement levels with different sets of audiences based on the existence (or lack of) an existing relationship.
In this case, segments will be hinged on the type of service or product purchased, buying patterns, etc.
The idea here is to use purchase history to anticipate future needs. Products and services can be showcased accordingly.
Channeling Social Platforms
Being cognizant of where and how your content is being consumed can help direct your marketing efforts in a big way. Understanding how your content performs on different social platforms gives you an idea of what your audience prefers and how they tend to interact within their circles.
Additionally, marketers can use social channels to target their audience in different stages of the buying cycle, so the two complement each other when it comes to developing a marketing strategy.
Lifestyle-based Segmentation
Audiences can also be segmented based on cultural habits and values, unique traits, lifestyle choices, etc. This segmentation is tough to pinpoint due to the lack of concrete information like age or geographic location, however, social media platforms and activities like Facebook quizzes and surveys can help.
Since lifestyle segmentation is more about personal preferences, values and lifestyle choices, marketers will need to dig a bit deeper to get the answers they are looking for.
Targeting and Retargeting
Assuming that your audience has been successfully segmented into relevant groups, the next stage is to target each group via different marketing campaigns with effective messaging. Demographics and buyer personas will help you draft the right message.
After delivering your message, the next stage is to retain the potential customers you have engaged in. An effective way to accomplish this is via customer loyalty programs. You also need to focus on addressing those among your potential customers who have not completed the sales funnel and not concluded a purchase.
Retargeting techniques help digital marketers understand why a certain section of your audience decided against opening your marketing emails or didn't spend time on your website. Remarketing uses cookies to track audience behavior and the websites they visit when they leave yours. This allows your target ads to be displayed to audience members who have visited but left your website without performing the desired action.
A word of caution - Retargeting may not be appropriate for all business sizes and forms a part of a broad marketing strategy.
To conclude, a personalized digital marketing plan will always have a higher rate of success and engagement with customers. With the widespread use of automated technology like self-serve kiosks and chatbots, digital marketers have the opportunity to connect and engage with audiences at never before seen levels of personalization.
That said, the most significant way to understand your customers and build awareness for your brand is through frequent and regular real-time engagement.
Now that you have reached the end of the article, as promised, here are some useful tools you can test during your customer segmentation and targeting efforts -
- Mail Chimp and Marketo - Email automation systems with inbuilt customer segmentation tools.
- Google Tag Manager - Integrate specific web services and tags. Keep in mind, this is slightly more complex and may require prior web development knowledge.
- Custom Audience Tool by Facebook - This is an easy way to target Facebook paid campaigns via emails.
- Activators such as Umbel (now MVP Audience) that allow the import and segment non-digital audience, such as those acquired via offline events.
We hope we have been able to add value to your digital marketing efforts and audience segmentation and targeting exercise. If you have any comments, suggestions or feedback, we would love to hear from you. Drop us a note and we will respond as soon as possible.