Why is market segmentation and target marketing so important to a marketing strategy? I think it’s so important because it really is the starting point for a marketing strategy. And why would that be? Because you don’t know WHO you’re marketing to. So think about your competitive advantage and you might have that down as a unique selling proposition USP or you might have your 30 second elevator speech created and that actually articulates your competitive advantage but you need to integrate with that your target audience. Think of it like this; a shotgun approach as compared to a sniper approach. So, sometimes a shotgun approach in marketing will work but more often than not you need to deliver that exact marketing message specifically to your target audience that you know already needs the product and service that you have.
So it might sound funny to say that but let’s think about this example in the segmentation and target market example segmenting is simply taking your entire target market and segmenting them into similar sections or segments. So, I know it’s always bad to use a definition used in the same word but a “segment” is a section of your target market that is similar. So using that example of hunters. Maybe here is a hunter that is looking for a vehicle for his recreational weekend trips. He would not go to the BMW dealership he may go to a pickup truck or a truck or an RV type dealership. So how would he know to go there? If that dealership has been looking forward their target audience and positioning themselves in the mind of their target audience! One of the four P’s of marketing is “Positioning” and they start their advertising campaigns and they’re targeting those people that have those psychographics and demographics too. I mean the age that would relate the geographics in that local area they’re not going to advertise in Florida when their dealership is in California. But mainly the psychographics because that gets into what they like to do. So that’s the hunting aspect. If that dealership used some billboard advertising and they’ve got a hunter with the rifle and Camo and maybe there’s a headline in a statement like “come on by our dealership, we got you covered” or whatever the case is.
So now that’s going to attract attention. They’re going to feel that they can relate to that dealership. Maybe there’s another advertisement maybe it’s a Facebook video where someone is out in the field out in a hunting environment and shooting a raw Facebook Live phone video talking about how their vehicle got them up the up the hill or the dealership and their sales staff were so helpful because the accessories that they recommended were so great for this hunting trip. You see where we’re going with that a business person with a briefcase and three piece suit might see that but they would not respond to that whereas the hunter would!
So in our marketing when we look at communicating our competitive advantage to our target audience we need to know who our target audience is and build out a complete avatar, which is really just a description of our target audience. I haven’t actually even seen training where people will recommend name your avatar. So it might be Tom or Billy or you know Hector or whatever the name you choose for that Avatar and literally have a picture depicting that person so that as you are writing your marketing campaigns or shooting your videos or bringing people on site you’re thinking about this person. Now what if it’s female or male. You could have a pink version for the female. You could show the female the smaller size vehicles. But yet still an SUV you can really go deep within that demographic and psychographic with those segments. So this is a very very important piece for you to think about in the structuring of your marketing strategy and campaigns.
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