11 August 2023 | Segmentation; Target audiences
By segmenting your customers, you can personalize your marketing and reach more (potential) customers. But how should you actually do if you want to develop customer segments? Take part in our workshop setup in 10 steps and get started!
Segmenting your (potential) customers means dividing them into smaller groups. You examine your customer data to find patterns in, for example, demographics, geography and psychographics. It is, in short, a customer analysis. You then use your identified segments – or target groups, as they are also called – as a basis for, for example, planning the offer in the restaurant, setting channel strategies and designing newsletters.
There are four types of segments:
Demographic segments
Such as age, gender, income, occupation and education.
Geographic segments
Such as region, city, country and climate.
Psychographic segments
Such as values, attitudes and lifestyles.
Behavior segment
Such as buying habits and brand loyalty.
The reasons are many. The short answer, however, is that you should get to know your guests and visitors better, in order to be able to make smarter decisions, streamline your marketing and achieve increased profitability. Starting from your unique segments in various activities constitutes a major competitive advantage.
You need to have access to different kinds of customer data. In the best of both worlds, you also have all your data collected in a customer data platform (CDP). Why? Well, a customer data platform collects, manages, and visualizes customer data from multiple sources to provide a unified view of customer interactions, characteristics, and behaviors. Examples of such sources are sales data, visitor data and data from social media. It is not a requirement to use a customer data platform, but it will make your life 100 times easier.
You now know what segmentation is and why you should do the job, right? It has therefore now become time to really get started. Go ahead – here we give you a 10-step workshop plan that you and your colleagues can use when you need to segment your customers. Let's workshop!
Clearly define what the purpose of the workshop is. Is it to gain a better understanding of your customer base, identify target segments or refine existing segments? With clear goals, you ensure that everyone who takes part in the workshop is working towards the same goal.
Collect your existing customer data – now you have to analyze! By going through data from, for example, completed events, customer surveys and marketing activities, you get lots of customer insights.
Can you identify any patterns and similarities between customers as you review the data? Look for things like interests, demographics, buying behaviors and what motivates visitors to clicks, interactions and purchases. Use the information to create preliminary segments.
Collect feedback regarding the segments from the workshop participants. Encourage discussion and brainstorming and allow all ideas, thoughts and suggestions to take place. Consider the feedback from different perspectives, such as sales, customer service and product development.
Evaluate the segments and the potential value of each segment. Which segments have the greatest growth potential? Which ones can be the most profitable? Prioritize the segments that are most valuable and relevant to your business and business goals.
Once you've mapped out which segments you want to use, you develop profiles for each segment (also called personas). How old are they? What do they work on? What do they do in their spare time? What media do they consume? Include as many details as possible. This will help you better understand and relate to each segment.
For each prioritized segment, you must now develop customized marketing strategies. Consider questions such as how you can best reach and engage the segments and which channels you will use in your marketing. You can also keep things like pricing, promotions and customer experience in mind.
How will the marketing strategies be implemented? You write that down in an action plan! Identify required resources, deadlines and responsible team members.
Keep an eye on the segments and marketing strategies and how everything is progressing. Does something need to be adjusted? Measure and analyze continuously to find areas for improvement.
Review and update your customer segments regularly, using new data, trends, customer feedback and other insights as a basis. As mentioned earlier, people acquire new interests and move to new cities, making segmentation not a one-time job – it's an ongoing process. If it has been some time since the workshop was carried out, you can therefore start again from step 1.
"With MarketHype, I can filter out, for example, everyone who has been here at least once in the past year, is of a certain age and lives in Gothenburg and the surrounding area. I can also exclude those who have already received a specific email, which is great!"
Teresa Vikstedt
Digital Marketing Manager, Göteborgs Symfoniker
MarketHype is your analysis and marketing system for experiences. We easily collect the data from your ticket or reservation system and provide you with customer insights to quickly increase your sales. A login gives you access to filtering and segmentation as well as automations and sales overview.
Do as many others in the event and experience industry have already done – get started today!
