4 steps for market segmentation and truly targeted marketing

Targeted marketing through market segmentation has quickly become a vital aspect of successful marketing. Targeted marketing through market segmentation has quickly become a vital aspect of successful marketing. But working out the most timely, cost-effective way for market segmentation and creating truly targeted marketing through analysis, market research and well-defined marketing strategies is difficult. The steps below explain where you should start.

1. Profiling for perfect market segmentation

The first step for marketers is to work out who you should be targeting. This can mean looking at past sales, exploring your own database, and carrying out internal market research. You need to work out who the key industries, organisations, demographics or job roles would be your ideal responders. Insights can be gained by talking with directors and established sales people – it is rare for all the details of past sales to be diligently recorded on your database. Once you have broken down your audience into a few key profiles, you can begin market segmentation at the database level.

2. Use market research to understand your target audience

Now you know who you are targeting it’s time to learn all about them. This can be achieved through internal quantitative research – sending out surveys to people on your database. However, this will only help you understand people who you already have relationships with your brand. To improve your chance of expanding your database and engaging new prospects it is wise to undertake external market research. The questions we typically answer in our market research projects are pain points within organisations, key concerns within the sector or brand related questions such as products or services the organisation is selling.

The graph below shows the difference of opinion between existing supporters and external prospects that we identified during a brand proposition test for Christian Aid. As you can see, most aspects of this proposition were more appealing for the supporters. However, the proposition was more likely to make prospects think differently. Insights like these can be used to adapt the proposition so it is as effective as possible for attracting new business. To learn more about this brand testing project with Christian Aid, download this case study.

Christian Aid Brand Proposition – Supporters v External Prospects

3. Pre-testing campaign concepts and creative testing

Now that you know who you are targeting and what they find engaging, you can come up with some campaign concepts and start concept testing. It is best to do this before you start creating your marketing campaigns to ensure you are starting with the correct approach. Otherwise you risk wasting time, money and creating campaigns that won’t engage your targets.

When you are happy with your concept you can create designs, messaging and decide on your marketing communication channels. At this point organisations need to decide which imagery and designs should be targeted at who. We advise you complete creative testing with consideration given to your market segmentation plan.

The example below is a sample of results from a DRTV creative testing project we completed for Children’s Air Ambulance. We have tested plenty of DRTV ads in the past and developed powerful benchmarking data, the colours indicate how the ad performs for some of the attributes we tested. Creative testing with benchmarking data in this way helps identify which audiences are likely to respond best to your marketing campaigns.

Key differences by gender

Key difference by age

4. Continue your testing, market research and market segmentation

Don’t get complacent! Attitudes towards your brand will change, as will the marketing communication channels, concepts and creatives you use. Good marketers are also always on the hunt for new opportunities and business should adapt and change with new products, services and markets. The only real way to keep on top of all this change is making the most of the quick, cost-effective nature of market research and creative testing to identify new opportunities and threats before they damage your marketing campaign response rates.

This article was written by Declan Spinks, Marketing Executive at fastmap. To learn more about how fastmap can help you with market segmentation, targeted marketing and market research take a look at our webinars ‘3 Tips for Targeted Marketing – Customers v Prospects’ and ‘Marketing & DB Insights: Tips for Increasing Response Rates’. To find out how we can help you in other areas visit www.fastmap.com or get in touch with David Cole on +44 (0) 20 7242 0702 or david.cole@fastmap.com.