Finding and Defining Your Business’s Ideal Audience Through Segmentation

Audience segmentation allows us to break down and comprehend data about our audience, helping us understand their needs and how we can fulfill them.

In this article, we’ll explore four key aspects of audience segmentation:

The importance of segmenting your audience.
The two fundamental rules of segmentation.
Criteria for segmentation – devices, ages, browsing times, etc.
Utilizing statistics to measure impact.

Keep reading to learn how to leverage audience segmentation to expand your business today.

Identifying and Characterizing Audiences Through Data Analysis

Here’s a little secret: the perfect marketing strategy doesn’t exist!

Wait – before you get frustrated, let me explain.

Marketing is about helping potential customers recognize the gap between where they are and where they want to be, and showing them how our product can bridge that gap.

Since each customer has unique needs, a one-size-fits-all marketing strategy is ineffective. This is why identifying and defining a target audience is crucial. We need to understand who they are and what they care about.

Creating Audience Segmentation

There are two primary rules for audience segmentation:

1. Meaningful Differences

Segment your audience into distinct groups. Each segment should be meaningful, with groups differing significantly from each other.

For example, differentiating between 23 and 24-year-olds isn’t practical. However, segmenting Gen Z and Gen Y users is effective since they have different values, behaviors, and interests. These distinctions guide our marketing strategies.

2. Homogeneity Within Groups

Ensure that members within a segment share enough similarities to allow you to create and test hypotheses for the entire group. Think of them as a unit with common interests and issues that your product or service addresses.

For instance, a segment like “men” is too broad. A more effective segment would be “men aged 23-31 in [location].” This approach considers age, gender, and location, enabling a more tailored marketing message.

Common Audience Segmentation Ideas

Here are some commonly used segmentation types:

Demographics

This includes age, gender, marital status, family size, income, occupation, etc. Demographic segmentation helps identify which audience your product is relevant for, their needs, and what they value most.

Geography

This refers to where a person lives, such as country, district, or city. Geographic segmentation is vital for local businesses, ensuring ads reach the relevant people and determining the appropriate actions for each location.

Behavior

This involves online actions, such as shopping habits, website interactions, device usage, social media behavior, and loyalty. Behavioral segmentation is crucial for understanding users better, finding the right audience, and optimizing bidding strategies.

Psychographics

This includes ideas, interests, values, and personality. Psychographic segmentation helps identify niche audiences interested in specific topics. For example, a theater could target theater enthusiasts, and a vegan restaurant could target vegans.

Using Segmentation to Collect Data

Data collection on different segments begins in one of two ways:

Create a hypothesis and run specific tests to validate it.
Observe data and identify trends.

Each method has its pros and cons.

Hypothesis testing provides data to support specific questions but might lead to biased conclusions. Trend observation can reveal unexpected customer behaviors but might overwhelm you with data, making it hard to focus on significant trends.

Regardless of the method, monitor trends in the four categories mentioned above, and use the data to:

Adjust ads for specific days, weekends, etc.
Modify bids for mobile/desktop devices or tailor copy and banners to suit how your audience views ads.
Increase bids for cities with higher CTR or lower CPC metrics.
Bid higher for high-potential audiences (remarketing/customer lists) or lower for low-potential ones.
Optimize bids for keywords showing better results.

Consider every test or hypothesis as a learning opportunity, and continue experimenting. Your audience is out there – you just need to find them.

Good luck on your journey – keep experimenting!

Aviv Braun

Leading the department of marketing at Give & Tech, while also being the founder and manager of the "Product Marketing 101" course and working as a senior digital marketing manager. Always eager to combine Technology, Psychology and Creativity.