Target Marketing Strategies: Customer Segmentation
Once a firm has completed customer segmentation in a market, it must then evaluate each segment to determine its attractiveness and where it offers opportunities that meet the firm’s capabilities and resources. Attractive segments may be dropped for lack of resources, no synergy with the firm’s mission, overwhelming competition in the segment, an impending technology shift, or ethical and legal concerns over targeting a particular customer segmentation.
- Single Customer Segmentation Targeting-capabilities are intrinsically tied to the needs of a specific market segment. This strategy is for true specialists in a particular product category. Firms fully understand their customers’ needs, preferences, and lifestyles. Constantly strive to improve quality and customer satisfaction by continuously refining their products to meet changing customer preferences.
- Selective Targeting-Firms that have multiple capabilities in many different product categories. Advantages include diversification of the firm’s risk and the ability to cherry-pick only the most attractive market customer segmentation opportunities. Pan G uses selective targeting to offer customers many different products in the family care, household care, and personal care markets. Success is that the company does not try to be all things to all customers. The company carefully selects product/market combinations where its capabilities match customers’ needs.
- Mass Marketing Tactics-only the largest firms, which involves the development of multiple marketing programs to serve all customer segments simultaneously.
- Product Specialization-where their expertise in a product category can be leveraged across many different market segments.
- Market Specialization-when their intimate knowledge and expertise in one market allow them to offer customized marketing programs that not only deliver needed products but also provide needed solutions to customers’ problems.
Non-customers do not purchase firms products because they can include unique customer needs, better-competing alternatives, high switching costs, lack of product awareness, or the existence of the long-held assumptions about a product. The key to targeting non-customers lies in understanding the reasons why they do not buy and then finding ways to remove these obstacles. Removing obstacles to purchase, whether they exist in product design, affordability, distribution convenience, or product awareness, is a major strategic issue in developing an effective marketing program.
INBOUND IDENTITY PROCESS INBOUND SALES LEADS
In the Identify stage of the Inbound Sales process, one must think about company size, focus, target, and specific need. Inbound salespeople will. Listen for inbound leads on the website. There are a number of inbound sales techniques you can use like practicing social selling with potential buyers, attending networking events, and researching passive buyers on Linkedin.
Define Your Ideal Business to Business Buyer Profile
- Company: ideal/not: employees, revenue, volume, or customers.
- Industries/verticals
- Geographic locations
Identify Inbound Leads
- The website sends inbound leads to your CRM in real-time
- CRM alerts of new leads
- Move to enrichment step of the Identity process if fits ideal business buyer profile
- Then Move to Connect Stage
- Move others to “unqualified” status
Modern technology enables you to identify the company from which an anonymous company visits. If a company fits your ideal buyer profile. Sources of active buyers include inbound leads (website activity), inbound companies, and trigger companies.
Identify Inbound Companies
Leverage common connection by conducting an advanced search in LinkedIn filtering on the attributes in your Ideal Buyer profile. Sort through the results. Look for contacts at companies that match your Ideal Buyer Profile that you are connected to through a person you know reasonably well. Once you find a contact that meets these criteria, add the contact and company to your CRM. Move the lead to the enrichment step of the Identify process and then to the Connect Stage.
Enrich the Lead with Buyer Context
How can we integrate Common enrichment data around buyer’s demographics directly into Pardot forms?
- Information provided by the buyer in the lead form
- Title or Role
- Industry
- Size of the company
- Geographic location
- Revenue
- City
- State
- Company Twitter handle
- URL of a company blog
- Company LinkedIn page
- Longevity of the contact with the company
- The content that the buyer has consumed from your company
- The conversion event of the lead
- The lead nurturing emails the buyer has received and which emails were opened
- The source buyer found your website
- Relevant commentary observed in the buyer’s social media or news posts
- Public information you find about the company from 3rd parties
- Information from speaking with their employees, customers, vendors, or partners
- Number of Employees
Identify Trigger Events
Include mentions by a potential buyer in social media of your or a competitor’s company, use of a keyword or hashtag aligned with your value proposition on social media, a social media post or blog post by a potential buyer. You can also look at a press release about the buyer (i.e. raising capital, expanding offices, earning results, etc.), a job ad by the buyer relevant to your solution area, and a new role or new executive hired by the company. Interest data about the lead and company: visit the source, lead conversion form data, conversion events, web pages visited, blog articles visited, emails received, and emails opened.
An Inbound Salesman spends 15 hours per week identifying and connecting with leads. They will understand who fits the buyer profile: website visits, Linkedin, trigger events (News), blog subscription (Feedly). Scanning of blogs includes new hires, the promotion of associates to new partners, opening of new offices, expansion of new practice into specialty areas. Company demographic information: Industry, Number of employees, city, state, company Twitter handle, URL of a company blog, URL of company Linkedin page
Buyer Personas for Speedy Bee Tees; Send a survey out to fill in rest of this information and please talk me through these better.
Age
Location: Denver, Boulder,
Keywords:
Media:
In which industry or industries does your company work?
What problem is trying to solve? Not the cheapest products/options – price, coverage, deductibles, business insurance, In-house meteorologist with 10% error Inside Subsidiary Claims in-house
What does he need to solve his problem? Insurance
What kind of information is he searching for? Personal network, colleges, and universities,
Type of content being posted: Earthquake facts and press releases
What is your job role? Your title?
How is your job measured?
What does a typical day look like?
What skills are required to do your job?
What knowledge and tools do you use in your job?
Who do you report to? Who reports to you?
What is the size of your company (revenue, employees)?
What goals are you responsible for?
What does it mean to be successful in your role?
What are your biggest challenges?
How do you learn about new information for your job?
What publications or blogs do you read?
What associations and social networks do you participate in?
Describe your personal demographics (if appropriate, ask their age, whether they’re married if they have children).
Describe your educational background. What level of education did you complete, which schools did you attend, and what did you study?
Describe your career path. How did you end up where you are today?
How do you prefer to interact with vendors (e.g. email, phone, in person)?
Do you use the internet to research vendors or products? If yes, how do you search for information?
Describe a recent purchase. Why did you consider a purchase, what was the evaluation process, and how did you decide to purchase that product or service?