Sending out massive ad campaigns can land you some sales, but it's expensive and a bit like just throwing things at the wall until something sticks. Mostly, things are going to land on the floor and leave you with a mess to clean up. However, you don't need to show every ad to every possible prospect in today's data-driven market. Instead, there are hyper-targeted marketing solutions that let you put personalized content in front of the audience for whom it's relevant.
Personalized marketing campaigns drive more engagement, cost less and help increase your lifetime customer value. Data segmentation tools let you send the right information to the targeted prospect at the exact time that's best for finalizing a sale.
What is Data Segmentation?
When buying or collecting information about prospects, you get a lot of data. That data isn't generic; it's specific to each potential customer. Data segmentation is the process of organizing customers into groups based on shared characteristics. This data can be internal to your company or external, it all depends on what works best for tailoring your approach. The primary use cases for this segmentation can be found in sales, marketing and customer service.
If you're marketing a B2B product, you can sort your prospects by size, job title, industry, and other segments to more clearly convey your message. After all, a small barber shop isn't likely to use a piece of scheduling software in the same way as a doctor's office, so you wouldn't want to market it to them in the same way, either. The same is true for B2C products. You wouldn't bother marketing an air conditioning system to someone living in Northern Alaska, but you would to someone in the South. Segmenting these prospects by geographic region can help with engagement and return on investment for your ad spend.
How Do You Segment Data?
Customer data today can include everything from a person's political affiliation to their favorite color. You have so much information, that it can be challenging to put it to work. But, with the right insights into each prospect's behavior and habits, you can create hyper-targeted marketing solutions that consistently convert.
When putting your customers into workable groups — segments — you'll want to combine both qualitative and quantitative data to create the most effective groupings. Purchase history, website click-throughs and other browsing behavior are all examples of quantitative information. Qualitative customer insights come from survey responses, reviews and other feedback. These reveal shared pain points and areas for future development, but all are valuable to your business.
Other types of segmentation are more directly strategic. Some of the most common ways to break down your prospect data include:
- Demographic Segmentation: Demographic information includes attributes like age, gender, and income.
- Firmographic Segmentation: For B2B companies, this is an area of focus since it's all about segmenting companies based on size, industry, job titles, filing status, etc.
- Behavioral Segmentation: With this type of segmentation, you're breaking up your data based on how prospects behave. Examples include website visits, social media engagement, purchase history, and so on.
- Psychographic Segmentation: This is the segment that might be sorted by political affiliation, religious beliefs, attitudes, interests and values.
With these segments, you can implement personalized marketing campaigns that:
- Improve Lead Generation: The more you know about a prospect, the more you can align marketing materials with that individual.
- Extend Your Reach: As you reach out to prospects, you have more information about when, where and how to make a connection.
- Boost Customer Support: Identify the customers most likely to experience problems from historical data, allowing you to improve your customer support and create more satisfied customers.
Don't Confuse Targeting and Segmentation
Targeting is one of the ways you use segmented data. It's the process of taking your data set and using it to create targeted ads. Segmentation is the prep work. It's your mise en place of marketing. When you're looking at large data sets, you need ways to make the information actionable, which is what segmentation does.
ZoomInfo, TrustRadius, and Gartner Digital are all examples of data segmentation tools that can help you with that mise en place. You can create highly detailed profiles for your most likely prospects. You can find indicators about where that prospect is on the buying journey. Have they already started researching the product? Are they ready to buy or almost ready? What, based on their recent activity and interests, might push them from the ready to the buy it now stage?
Traditional segmentation offers some customization, but drilling down to create highly targeted micro-segments is the path to personalized marketing campaigns that don't require individual advertising.
When you can direct a prospect to the landing pages that directly address their pain points or send emails that contain all the information needed for them to make a final purchasing decision, you dramatically increase the relevance and effectiveness of your marketing efforts.
Putting Your Micro-Segments to Work
Since you have more information about customers than ever and can build micro-segments to offer more highly targeted content, how do you do it? You start by identifying unique characteristics for your most important customer segments. These "key differentiators" are what turn a one-time buyer into a brand ambassador. For example, you might see two prospects searching for information about fiber supplements. One is a person with diabetes and the other has high cholesterol. While both share a behavioral segment, you'll want to tailor your approach based on the why. Why are they researching fiber? Because it can help with their health. But, they have different healthcare concerns.
Continue to refine your approach by looking at the customer's preferred communication methods. If you have prospects who run ad-blocking software and rarely open their email but who sign up for SMS alerts, you have a way to get your message to them in the way they are most receptive to.
Personalized marketing campaigns are all about creating the best customer interactions. By paying attention to what the prospect prefers, you create a relationship that goes beyond a single transaction. There are many ways to utilize this data, but here are a few options to get you started.
1. Using Machine Learning to Predict Customer Behavior
For a B2C company, start by segmenting your customers according to their activity, likes, and purchases. Use the results to create profiles for your ideal customers in each segment. Then, machine learning can help make predictions about what customers might want to see next. Amazon has shown the value of doing this for more than a decade. Other products you might like can be a really great way to prolong engagement and lock down another sale, if those suggestions are actually relevant to the buyer.
Personalizing the content based on past behavior and micro-segments is a must. You don't want to advertise new curtains to someone just because they bought a curtain rod, particularly if they grabbed the curtains last week. Instead, you might want to offer some installation help or other window treatments. It's all about offering customers what they need at the moment, and machine learning is a great way to figure that out by looking at large trends in purchasing and applying those trends to the individual.
2. A/B Testing on Micro-Segments
You'll never get it right the first time, all the time. Even the best marketing gurus have campaigns that underperform expectations. That's especially true when dealing with smaller groups. There's no substitute for testing your theories about what a micro-segment might prefer in real-time.
A/B tests on everything from font choices and color schemes to image choice and taglines are part of the learning process. Over time, you develop better messaging designed to appeal to each micro-segment, and your hyper-targeted marketing becomes realized.
3. Building Local Campaigns that Match National Trends
You don't want your business to be a fad, or a one-hit wonder, but you do want to stay on top of the trends. No, not every area will jump on the same trends at the same time, but many will. If it's on the national news, there's likely someone in the local region who's invested in the topic. If you can tie that national impact to something regional, it resonates with people in that geographic area and lends immediacy to your advertising.
Going back to our healthcare example, you might want to offer information about glycemic control and how to keep your blood sugar lower during the month of November. It's National Diabetes Awareness Month, which helps tie the national conversation into what people are doing day-to-day. Plus, some might appreciate having that information while staring down the Thanksgiving Day spread.
Conclusion
Data segmentation is a strategic tool that you can use to improve your marketing results. Personalized marketing campaigns are gaining popularity because they're successful. Keep your marketing moving with hyper-targeted marketing solutions that actually sell.
At Further, we help businesses create personalized marketing campaigns that generate results. Contact us to learn more.
