Segmenting Customers with Purpose
Customer segmentation is one of the most tried and true aspects of a traditional marketing plan. Companies define audience groups based on demographics, psychographics, geographic location, or behaviors and then identify their common traits in order to tailor their marketing efforts. Although recently there has been some pushback on the usefulness of marketing segmentation, we strongly believe that customer understanding and defining audiences by common traits and behaviors is core to designing exceptional customer experiences.
However, we also believe that marketing and customers are changing and traditional segmentation methods may need to be reconsidered.
One striking fact on how customers are evolving: 66% of people now say that they prefer to buy from brands that reflect their personal values. We know our clients have topics that are near and dear to their hearts, and clearly their potential customers are looking to buy from businesses that reflect their principles.
With this in mind, we crafted our Purpose-First Segmentation approach that starts with two questions:
What values are core to your brand identity?
What are your main growth goals?
By defining what matters most to your brand - both in terms of values and goals - we are able to match you to the customers who are aligned on that purpose.
Here’s how our Purpose-First Segmentation works:
Narrow in on what matters to you as a brand.
We start by defining what your brand values are by discussing the issues that are most near and dear to your heart. From there, we specify exactly what you are trying to accomplish. This determines the attributes we look for in potential customers and they types of questions we ask.
Find the audience that best aligns with your values and goals.
We define a criteria for what makes up your most receptive customer - both in terms of aligning with your values and your growth goals. We then use an online survey to find the group that best fits your “bullseye audience” criteria. We also ask about commerce behaviors, media consumption, and other lifestyle traits that allow us to have a robust profile of this audience. Finally we size the potential with this audience in terms of reach and revenue.
Define specific audience needs for engagement and conversion.
We dig deeper to understand how your bullseye audiences’ core principles manifest as needs along the purchase funnel. What does it mean to reflect their principles? How can they feel connected to your community? What would make their purchase easier? How can you demonstrate the purchase value?
Align marketing messages, media, and product / features roadmap to needs.
Once we have a solid idea of the needs for this core audience, we will ideate the best ways to reach them and grow affinity for your brand through digital customer experience. By balancing customer needs with company capabilities we will deliver a recommendation for marketing as well as a prioritized digital roadmap that will create a deep connection with your customers through purpose and principles.
Ready to align with your customers on purpose? Use this “getting started” framework to begin thinking about what matters to you most and reach out to learn more about how to find, plan for, and market to your best customers.
