What’s the big deal with segmentation and targeting?

Understand your audience

At Eight Digital we know data is the key to any successful marketing campaign.

You’ve completed your Free Data Health Check.

Your data has been cleansed.

You’ve even arranged some customer profiling to be completed, to analyse your audience and get a more in depth understanding of ‘who they are’ and ‘what they look like’.

Now what!?

That’s where segmentation and targeting really come into their own.

Segmentation – What is it?

Segmentation is where you ‘split’ your customer data into separate categories or segments, using well-defined criteria. The 4 main types of segmentation are demographic, geographic, psychographic and behavioural. Each group or segment you create, shares common characteristics.

Segmentation allows you to maximise your time, budget and resources more effectively as you can choose the most appropriate channel, adjust the budget and even the alter the message, to ‘speak’ to your chosen segment in the best way possible.

Targeting – Why bother?

Targeting is the process of identifying and addressing the segments you have created – using an appropriate channel – with a tailored message appropriate to their shared characteristics & traits.

Your targeting could include

• Location

• Buying habits

• Age

• Gender

• Social Class

• Interests

Using a segmented and targeted approach, allows you to deliver more relevant, personalised, and effective marketing messages. This in turn leads to improved response rates and the ultimate goal, of more enquires and sales.

But it doesn’t just have to be about sales and the bottom line. Using a targeted approach to your campaign management, can lead to higher engagement rates, an uplift in customer loyalty, or simply stronger connections with your audience.

Putting it all into practice

There’s not a single marketing channel we can think of that doesn’t benefit from a segmentation and targeting approach. For example

• Email – Hyper Personalisation. You can address customers accurately, and appropriately – and more importantly only send them the individual updates or offers you want them to see.  No more blanket emails to your entire database. It’s the perfect way to get the best bang for your marketing buck!

• Digital Marketing – right message, right person, right time. The flexibility that digital marketing channels allow, means you can target your ideal potential customers (eg by age, location, device) at various touchpoints (maybe it’s via Facebook, or your website) with the perfect offer (a discount or deal) at exactly the right time for them.

Taking a ‘test and learn’ approach means, as soon as you have some measurable results from your digital activity, you can turn the dial up (or down) to ensure you keep on getting the ideal response.

• Direct Mail – No more wasted mailings. You can specifically target a new or existing audience, in your ideal location, with a message that you know is going to bring you the greatest return on investment.

Still feeling a bit confused?

If this all sounds like gobbledygook to you…then let our marketing experts lend you a hand.

We can delve into your data insights, upgrade your creative outputs, print your perfect promotion & help you deliver some truly delightful digital campaigns.