Audience segmentation is creating customer groups using their data. It is useful to deliver custom messages to the relevant customer groups. For example, when promoting an online wear platform, some users may like official attire and others are comfortable with streetwear.

When you segment your audience, you can give them different offers, promotions and messages in their groups. You can do so on ad platforms, such as MailChimp, HubSpot, Google Ads, Facebook Ads or MobileMonkey. You can segment in a whole lot of ways like in past company interactions, preferences, purchase history, income, age or hobbies.

It will save you budget and you can achieve a high return on investment. 

We’ve asked experts from Alpha Efficiency, a PPC agency in Chicago, to let us in on the most efficient ways for segmenting your audience:

  1. Demographics

It is a popular way to segment your audience. When running your business, you can collect user data such as the level of education, gender, family makeup, income, and age. All these are demographic data. You can segment your audience using these data, and choose who to target and with what information.

You can also use it to eliminate audiences you do not want to target on your campaign. For example, if you are running a food company, some foods fit younger audiences, while others are preferred by older people.

  1. Lifestyle

Lifestyle factors to consider are hobbies, beliefs, attitudes and interests. You need to study your audience to identify these consistent themes in your data. It will help you break down your demographics further to obtain more categories.

For instance, when you are running a sports store, most products are related to hobbies, and you should target them appropriately. One section of your audience might like football while others prefer badminton.

  1. Behavior

Every individual has their unique way of operating. For example, one might rarely go shopping, while another person is enthusiastic about it and shops in every chance they get. Their purchase behavior is different, and it is something you should watch out for. 

Targeting these two types of people is different. You will need to contact the regular purchaser more than the one who rarely shops. It gives you a chance to boost your sales, if you have a good value proposition.

  1. Buyer’s history

Buyers have different experiences and they have varying decision-making, considerations and awareness of what they are doing. If a buyer is relatively new, you’ll have to talk to them differently to persuade them to embrace your brand and be one of your regular buyers. 

For regular visitors, you can take a different route to offer them different packages that they can get out of your business, or direct them to new content. You can be creative as much as you want, because there is no specific way to do it.

Having these two segments gives you options, and allows you to deal with different types of visitors appropriately.

  1. Geographics

You might already know about this if you optimized your site for local SEO. On your website, visitors can be from your local area, another state or country. With their geographic data, you can customize your services and products to fit their preferences and access modes.

For example, if your company deals with event tickets, you target individuals who are highly likely to get to the event within a certain geographical area. It gives you a high hit rate, which means more sales.

Segment Your Target Audience

Gathering Data And Beginning To Segment

After deciding how you want to segment your audience, you can start gathering data. You can choose from a variety of different data-gathering methods, ranging from old-school to high-tech:

  • Surveys
    Questionnaires sent through emails, pop-up surveys on your website, and even the mail surveys can be pretty informative. Try not to go over the board; a few simple questions can give you some clear and valuable information. 
  • Phone calls
    We know how many people think of phone calls as the outdated option when it comes to segmenting their audience; they are pretty low-tech and time-consuming after all. And although phone calls are not quite efficient when you’re trying to segment a very broad audience, they can be helpful when dealing with a smaller group of people. They allow you to learn more or better understand a segment you’ve already created.
  • Link tracking
    This next tip can really come in handy in your email marketing campaigns. Adding tags and tracking information to your links helps you learn more about the people who click. Suppose your weekly newsletter includes a link to your latest blog. In that case, you can add the tag “Reads blogs” to your link. It’s important to know that although not all email marketing platforms have this option – many of them do.
  • Analytics platform
    Lastly, platforms such as Google Analytics, HubSpot, and many more can be your best partner when segmenting your audience. Of course, some skill is needed to get the most out of them, but once you get into it, you can easily start tracking information regarding your audience’s age, location, gender, and interests. 

Best Practices For Audience Segmentation

Now that we’ve covered all the essential steps, let’s see some of the best practices to include into your audience segmentation:

  • Set your goals – As with anything else, setting your goals is the first and most important step. It will allow you to direct your steps, techniques and the overall segmenting in the right way. 
  • Measure your success – With the previous technique in mind, we also advise you to continually measure your success. That way, you’ll know your strengths and weaknesses, and will know how to act accordingly.
  • Don’t go too narrow – Yes, your goal is to have a specific and clear image of your target audience. However, don’t go too far with segmenting – if your segment groups include no one or only a few people, you should consider losing some of the filters.
  • Allow your segments to change – Your segments may change over time, which is completely normal. Therefore, you should avoid etching them in stone.

Final Thoughts

Segmenting your audience gives you more control over your customers and ad campaigns. You get to target and communicate differently with these segments and you’ll achieve better results. If you are wondering how you’ll collect data, don’t panic. You can do so through analytics platforms, phone calls, link tracking and surveys.