Segment and Attack
Segmentation is the art of understanding the target audience. It is one of the most important things to consider while strategizing. While helping entrepreneurs I see most of them miss out on understanding the importance of segmenting their customers. Without this the branding, messaging, and pitch everything becomes vague. In today’s world of clutter one solution fits all doesn’t work.
The point to note is that this strategy works everywhere not only in Marketing. Even in our cybersecurity industry segmenting the network becomes very important to reduce the attack surface. We segment the network into zones to have better control over the sensitive applications and write the policies accordingly.
Segmentation can be done on multiple form factors. It is very important that we choose the right combination rather than choosing one of the four types -Demographic, Psychographic Geographic, and Behavioral. For example, when structuring a corporate leadership course most organizations segment the students/audience based on years of work experience. While that segmentation might help the team to bond it doesn’t help to effectively pitch/ brand the curriculum. I’ve seen segmenting the batches based on diversity, domain specialization, salary bracket, etc have worked much better than the more well-known years of work-ex.
A lot of CEOs often miss out on the importance of segmentation. I have noticed that large organizations have a host of products/ SKUs and they educate their salespeople about everything and as a result, they position every single product to the end customers. I personally feel it’s a wrong strategy. The right way would be to first segment the market based on industry and then teach the sales team about how the products work for that particular industry that they are selling to. Focussed education based on segmentation would always make the sales team more effective.
The point is if you are an Entrepreneur please first think through the various ways you can segment. While guiding owners in the clothing industry I highlight that thinking all women are their customers is wrong. In that category also they have to segment based on age, background, personality, etc. Once you segment it that way you know how to put a pitch around your products. For example, there are so many people who sell women’s clothing but if you are targeting a segment of working professionals you might want to position your product along with accessories, stitching/alterations, and home delivery which will save a lot of time for them. If we segment correctly we will define the need of our customers correctly and that will pave the path for success.
It is very important to understand every segment that you want to cater to and then enhance the product/ solution. Segmentation is a concept that sounds easy but is the core of your strategy. Unless we segment right we will lose the focus in the midst of the journey of growth.
