The Magic of Target Marketing

One of the best days of my life (apart from meeting my husband of course) was when I was taught the awe-inspiring art of marketing segmentation. To sum up it in a few simple words, marketing segmentation (a complex term for target marketing) is the ability to separate the lists of people/customers you wish to market to into easy to define ‘targeted’ marketing groups. The reason this is so powerful is that you gain the ability to speak directly and strategically to different market segments that all have their own specific needs. Thus, you gain additional ‘power’ to build your brand momentum commercially. Also, your corporate team will gain confidence from the optimized focus and larger overall return on investment.
Since marketing is all about appropriate targeted communications, the better we learn to segment our marketing efforts, the more effective your campaigns will be. Here are some of the basic marketing segmentations: Gender, Price, Interests, Location, Religion, Income, Size of Household, Age, Education, Occupation, and/or End/Use.
Of course, every company is different. Albeit some companies offer products and some companies sell services, every company can benefit by sorting their customer data lists into different groups and marketing to them differently for different objectives.
To do this, you must maintain an accurate customer list. For smaller companies, manual managed lists will suffice if well maintained and well sorted. For larger companies, I highly recommend utilizing a customer database management program, like Salesforce.com and/or a ‘Void Matrix’ program (a program that will assist in showing which customers are buying some products, but not buying other products).
Here is a general example of segment marketing:
Susie manages marketing for a national office supply company. She has a few major initiatives during the year for her two major customer segments (Existing Customers and New Customers):
Existing Customers:
1.Thank all loyal customers with a 10% Off Next Order Coupon: Susie should pull entire customer list, print coupons and deliver to entire customer base.
2. Increase sales by selling one new item to each customer on their regularly scheduled delivery (that they have not purchased previously): Susie can pick an item to focus on that really maximizes profits, like printer paper. Then, she can sort which customers are not buying paper. Finally, she can create a program to make a specific ‘printer paper’ promotion to just those customers.
New Customers:
3. Increase overall sales by adding one new delivery customer to each West Cost route: Susie can purchase a qualified ‘potential customer’ lead list and/or utilize sales leads from her sales for ONLY West Coast customers within a certain radius. If she wanted to ‘drill down’ even further, Susie can sort the list by cities and manage her promotions from a more targeted perspective.
The true magic of marketing is most effective with targeted marketing. When you learn to master your customer data lists and sort communications properly, your sales will increase and your sales team and company will gain additional confidence while promoting your services.
Bottom line, segmented marketing will allow you to utilize your yearly marketing budget more efficiently with targeted efforts for better results… and that is the true ‘Magic of Target Marketing’.
If you have questions or need assistance on your marketing efforts, please leave a comment or question.
Best Marketing Wishes as Always, Add+In Marketing