Know thy consumer. A fundamental commandment in all things business and, for many marketing firms like Ideabar, essential when helping clients build a brand following and grow a successful company.
Understanding your consumers’ demographics, behaviors and psychographics will inform all creative assets you send to your customers.
Consumer research is an essential component of successful marketing – making sure the right messages and visuals are shown to the right people. A big part of the research process is identifying the different consumer audiences – or segments – you are trying to reach.
However, some companies make the mistake of assuming that the household records in their customer list will look, act and think the same – simply because they purchase the same product or service. But rarely is that the case. Implementing marketing decisions based on this assumption leaves money on the table. It’s as simple as that.
It may be easier and cheaper short-term for companies to market to their customer list as a whole. But a single customer list is normally comprised of several important segments.
These segments are often driven by different things, are in different life stages, belong to different income brackets, different household structures, prioritize different factors, etc. While it would be highly impractical and unnecessary to target each and every segment in a customer list, identifying the most significant two or three – and messaging each separately – can drastically improve a company’s ROI.
Say you own a stationery company and that you keep diligent customer records. You could easily send out a general message to all of your customers on that list – after all, they’re all bound together by the fact that they’ve purchased stationery supplies from you at some point. Chances are, however, that you won’t get much traction with that strategy. In fact, a lot of your efforts (and dollars) would be wasted.
But with the help of customer segmentation research, you would uncover which customers are likely to be repeat customers in the future and focus your marketing dollars on them. What do these repeat customers look like? Where do your high-spending customers live and what media channels are more likely to get their attention? Furthermore, depending on how detailed the data you have in these records is, this customer research could also allow you to further segment your list based on different important variables.
For example, what do your notebook customers look like versus your greeting-card customers? Who are your summer customers, and are they different from your winter customers? Do your online customers look the same as your in-store customers? Chances are, these segments differ demographically, psychographically and behaviorally. Customer segmentation would give you the power to create highly targeted marketing strategies – strategies that involve unique ad sets for each of your top segments. Ad sets that have a significantly greater chance of resonating with your audience.
Marketing and consumer research companies like Ideabar use customer segmentation research to help companies identify their most promising targets, narrow in on the geographic regions of highest opportunity and even uncover prospective future customers – all based on an existing lists of customer records.
Instead of throwing marketing dollars at a vague list of records, these companies are equipped with highly detailed personas that inform and strengthen their media and creative strategies – all of which ultimately grow their business.