How to Use Customer Segmentation in Marketing

The goal of customer segmentation is to know your customers better, and use this knowledge to improve customer satisfaction and corporate profitability. At its most basic level, customer segmentation is to classify customers with similar characteristics in groups (known as "segments"), then deal with the segments instead of individual customers. This is especially important in organisations with large customer bases, where contacting each customer individually would be virtually impossible.

Ideally, customer segmentation will make use of various statistics to help determine the attributes that could significantly impact on the customer relationship. Most commonly, customer segmentation deals with demographics such as sex, location, age, etc. For graphic and web design firms, customer segmentation is often a key component used to create material that will best communicate with a specific type of person. This is often an essential tool for the development of a clearly defined design strategy with your objective at the forefront. When you understand clearly who you are trying to attract, completing a Psychographic Profile will ensure your marketing material is designed specifically for your intended audience using the colours, fonts and shapes that best communicate your message on a concious and sub-concious level. There are three areas to consider when you approach customer segmentation: demographic, behaviour and needs.

Customer segmentation is often essential to the success of direct mail. By using segments of customers with similar interests you are more likely to make a strong connection and influence their buying behaviour. In addition, a major goal of customer segmentation is customer loyalty. Customer segmentation may also identify which groups need more attention. It can be time consuming to prepare your customer segmentation however it will allows for more cost-effective marketing solutions in the long run. You will be able to send the right message to the right customer without confusing them with to much information. Instead of having one company brochure that covers every product you sell, every service you provide and every option you have, you may have a series of brochures that better communicate more specific messages to a particular kind of person.

Customer Segmentation Creates Customer Satisfaction

During periods of weakness in the global economy customer satisfaction is one of the key factors to the ongoing success of your business. When the economy is strong you can possibly survive with less attention on customer satisfaction. More people are prepared to shop around in a down-turn which is great for new businesses looking to expand and have well designed marketing material to attract the right kind of customer. New and small businesses are likely to stay focused on customer satisfaction because they understand the value of the customer, where larger businesses often don't show as much care for customers.

There are many ways to determine customer satisfaction, the best way to gain this information is to ask customers directly. This is usually done through a survey which can be printed or online, whatever is better suited to your customers. The design of the survey to make the process look as simple and professional as possible will enforce the fact that you take your customers seriously and care about their needs.

When you make customer satisfaction a long term strategy of your business and continue to calculate the survey results you can establish what areas are improving and what needs more attention. You may also see trends that you can use to your advantage. Customer satisfaction is essential in building long-term, profitable relationships which lead to customer loyalty turning them into raving fans. It is well known that customer acquisition is much more expensive than keeping an existing customer. Once you know who your customers are, you are ready to have material designed to best communicate to your target market and grow your business strategically.

 

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