Segmenting Your Market.
Many businesses make the mistake of serving “everyone”.
You ask a business owner, “Who is your target market?” and the person tells you that the business serves everyone. That’s ridiculous.
Let’s take a product that everyone in the world uses as an example, “WATER”. Everyone drinks water, but Nestle won’t tell you that they serve everyone. Technically, not everyone can afford to spend over #100 on a bottle of water, a huge population will rather buy a sachet of water for #10.
Every business ought to know the sect of the market they are serving.
Even if your product is needed by the whole population, you can’t throw your net so wide by saying that everyone is a customer. You can’t please everyone.
A popular quote says that the only way to please everyone is to sell Ice-cream and guess what? Not everyone takes or likes ice cream. The Ice-cream seller and producer need to also define who they are selling to, people who need and love ice cream.
Well, you might be wondering, “what other benefits are there to market segmentation?”. Here goes.
Market segmentation helps you craft your niche in the market and know exactly who your product or service is for. It gives you a clear picture of your customer’s profile (who they are, where they work, shop, eat, etc, what they do for fun, what kind of people they associate with, and other demographic and psychographic traits they have).
When you are sure of the people you are serving, you will also know for sure if you have the product that they need. Knowing your target market will help you know whether or not to tweak any feature in your product, if your product needs some level of customization, etc to fit the needs of your target audience.
Another reason to segment your market is because it makes your marketing message stronger and clearer to your target audience. You know who they are, what will tickle their interest and what they will like to hear and it will help you craft your message to fit what they wanna hear, since you have already decided that your product fits their needs.
Apart from having a clear and strong marketing message, you also understand better how to send the message across to them, the channels of communication. The knowledge of who your target audience is helps you know where they spend their time, and how they spend their time or respond to things there.
Now that your marketing message is strong and clear, and you are using the right channels, you can better attract the right audience to your business. You now know where they are and how to reach them with the right strategies and words, so you should be getting the attention from the people you want to serve. The wrong message and tactic will surely get you attracting the wrong audience.
You now have the right audience. Another thing segmenting your audience will do for you is building loyalty. You understand their language, you are speaking it at the right time and the right place, you will most likely have an emotional effect on them, since they believe that you understand them and you care about them. This will in turn, earn you their loyalty.
Of course, loyal customers are great sources of new customers. They are loyal to you, so they will surely invite their friends and family to patronize you. This will result in more revenue and more share of mind and more market.
Segmentation will also help you serve your customers better. This is because you now have a thorough knowledge of who your customers are and what they will like. You can now carve out additional benefits for them to make their usage of your product more enjoyable.
In conclusion, market segmentation helps companies grow their profit margins because they now know who they are in business for and are putting their energy and resources into serving them in the best possible way. You can’t possibly do that if the whole world is your target market.
