Marketing and advertising are most effective when they are highly targeted and tailored to resonate with specific groups within your overall audience. Trying to appeal to everyone tends to water down your messaging and makes it hard to connect with any one group in a meaningful way. This is where audience segmentation comes in.
Audience segmentation is the process of dividing your target audience into distinct groups that share common attributes. These attributes may include demographics, interests, behaviors, needs, or other characteristics. The goal is to develop targeted messaging and content that speaks directly to the wants, motivations, and preferences of each unique audience segment.
An effective segmentation strategy enables you to fine-tune your marketing to be as relevant as possible for different subsets within your audience. This leads to higher engagement, conversion rates, and return on investment from your marketing efforts. According to studies, 89% of marketers say targeting specific audience segments improves marketing effectiveness. Additionally, segmented campaigns generate 760% more orders than non-segmented campaigns.
In today’s crowded marketplace, speaking to your audience in a one-size-fits-all manner is no longer sufficient. To stand out and drive real results, you need a thoughtful segmentation approach. This guide will walk through the key steps involved in creating an audience segmentation strategy for more laser-focused marketing.
Define Your Goals
Before dividing your audience into segments, clearly identify your marketing and business goals. Ask yourself:
- What do I want to achieve through audience segmentation?
- Am I aiming to generate more leads and sales?
- Build awareness and reach?
- Better engage and nurture existing customers?
- Something else?
Defining your objectives upfront ensures your segmentation strategy directly supports your core marketing and business goals.
For example, if your goal is to increase conversions, you may want to segment by behaviors and attributes that indicate buyer readiness. Or if you want to boost brand awareness, targeting audience groups receptive to your messaging can help get it in front of more of your ideal audience.
Establishing specific, measurable goals for your segmentation initiative provides focus and a way to determine success. Without clarity on your aims, you run the risk of dividing your audience arbitrarily without actually furthering your marketing and business objectives. So before going further, clearly articulate what you want to achieve and why audience segmentation will help you get there.
Identify Audience Attributes
To segment your audience effectively, you need to identify the key attributes that define each group. There are several categories of attributes to consider:
Demographics
Demographics include basic factual characteristics like age, gender, location, income level, education level, ethnicity, language, occupation, and more. These attributes can strongly influence interests, values, and purchasing behavior. For example, a campaign targeted to working mothers would focus on females aged 25-45 with children at home.
Interests
Look at hobbies, passions, goals, and personal or professional interests that connect your audience segments. For instance, an audience of hobby photographers would have very different interests than corporate IT managers. Identify common interests to unite each segment.
Behaviors
Behavioral attributes relate to how audience members interact with your brand and content. This includes their preferred content format, social media behaviors, buying cycles, product usage, content consumption, purchasing habits, travel patterns, decision making roles, and more. The goal is to find meaningful patterns.
Psychographics
Psychographic segmentation analyzes personality traits, attitudes, beliefs, and lifestyles. For example, an audience of innovators focused on the latest tech trends versus a group of traditionalists. Surveys and customer interviews can provide psychographic insights.
The more detailed you get with your audience attributes, the more finely you can define each segment. Look for meaningful similarities within groups and clear differences between them. Track engagement metrics over time to see which attributes truly resonate.
Create Audience Personas
Creating detailed audience personas is a critical step in developing your segmentation strategy. An audience persona represents your ideal customer and allows you to get into the mindset of your target segments.
When creating audience personas, aim to develop fictional, representative profiles of each segment. Give each persona a name and photo to make them more realistic. Then compile details to build out their attributes:
- Demographics – Age, gender, location, income level, education, occupation, marital status, etc.
- Goals and challenges – What motivates them? What problems do they want to solve? What are they trying to achieve?
- Interests and hobbies – What do they like to do in their spare time? What are they passionate about?
- Media consumption habits – Where do they get their information? What platforms and channels are they most active on?
- Brand preferences – What brands do they currently use and trust? What influences their loyalty?
- Purchasing habits – How do they make buying decisions? What factors influence them most? How do they consume and use products/services?
- Objections – What barriers or concerns might prevent them from buying? How can you overcome these?
- Marketing response – What messages and offers resonate best with them? How do they want to be communicated with?
The more detailed you can make your audience personas, the better you will understand your target customers on a deeper level. This allows you to craft messaging and experiences that directly appeal to their unique wants, needs, and interests.
Group Your Audience
Once you’ve done the work to understand who your audience is and create detailed personas, it’s time to start dividing them into distinct segments based on shared attributes. The goal is to group together audience members who are similar to each other, so you can optimize your messaging and marketing to resonate with their specific needs and interests.
When grouping your audience into segments, consider attributes like:
- Demographics – Age, gender, location, income level, education, etc.
- Interests and hobbies – What they like to do in their spare time.
- Online behaviors – Where they spend time online, how they engage with content.
- Psychographics – Attitudes, values, lifestyles, personalities.
- Purchasing habits – Frequency, recency, monetary value.
- Job roles and seniority level – For B2B segmentation.
- Brand interaction – New customers, repeat customers, loyalists.
Look for patterns and themes that emerge among groups of people with shared characteristics. The segments should be distinct from one another, with each representing a targetable subgroup. Avoid too much overlap between segments.
It can help to visualize your audience segments through charts or graphs. See where there are clusters of people with common attributes so you can divide accordingly.
Aim for 3-5 core audience segments to start. You can always refine and add more segments later as needed. The goal is to focus on broader groups first before getting more granular.
Audience segmentation takes work upfront, but pays off through more relevant, targeted marketing. Take the time to really understand your audience and divide strategically. It will enable you to craft content and campaigns tailored to each segment’s unique interests and needs for better results.
