What is Market Segmentation? Importance for your business

You've spent time and money creating the perfect marketing strategy, and you want your message to resonate well with your potential customers, right?

Communication is an art, and it's incredibly easy for a message to get lost, confused, or completely avoided as your audience grows in size. As your audience grows, so do their preferences, needs, and opinions, which can put your marketing message at risk of not being relevant to the majority of people you're trying to reach.

This is exactly why segmenting your target market is crucial. Using marketing automation software can help better manage large audiences and create a segmented, personalized, and targeted marketing experience. This practice allows you to focus your marketing efforts on individual customer segments to better meet their specific wants and needs.

This method gives your brand an edge over your competition because you can prove to potential customers that you understand them and know what they need most.

What is market segmentation?

Market segmentation is a business practice that brands use to divide their target market into smaller, more manageable groups of people based on a common ground they share in order to optimize their marketing efforts , advertising and sales. Simply put, customers in each market segment have similar characteristics that businesses can leverage to advance their efforts.

Market segmentation aims to introduce a personalized message that will be successfully received. This is advantageous for companies that offer a product or service in the market that offers multiple benefits or uses for different types of customers.

Accept that you can't be everything to everyone, and as a marketer, you can't solve everyone's problem or please everyone. This is exactly why market segmentation is such an effective growth strategy to implement.

Tip: Before you start market segmentation, you need to have a solid marketing mix. This is your basis for everything that follows in this article.

Types of market segmentation

As you can imagine, there are many different approaches you can take when segmenting your target market.

This article will walk you through the four main types and concrete examples of market segmentation to get you started. Learning from those who have done it right will help your brand achieve the success you seek.

Geographic segmentation

Geographic segmentation targets customers based on a predefined geographic boundary. Differences in interests, values, and preferences vary widely from city to city, state to state, and country to country. It is therefore important that marketers recognize these differences and advertise accordingly.

Think products like parkas and swimwear.

Parkas will be sold most of the year in the colder northern half of the country, while southern regions will only be able to find parkas in specialty stores during the winter. On the other hand, swimsuits are sold year-round in warmer states, but are generally only sold in spring and summer in cooler states.

Another example of geographic segmentation is the iconic fast food chain McDonald's. If you have never been to a...