Market Segmentation:

How To Use Segmentation to Increase Sales

By James Atkinson, LLB

Market Segmentation: Online surveys provide insights into markets that cannot be obtained in any other way – particularly with offline surveys. Here are some of the major reasons to survey your market:

Give Buyers What They Want

To give buyers what they want you must ask them what they want – this is the foundation of all marketing and business success! You then build your product portfolio on what you know prospects want. This is a direct application of analytics + action. This minimizes risk for your business. You can find out with scientific and statistical accuracy whether a market is a gem or a dud before you spend much time and money.

Money in the Market

In Step 2 of the Persuasionworks System you evaluate markets and have already determined that there’s money in the market. However, a proper survey confirms that there’s money in a market in a more granular way.

Online Information Not Available

Often searchers take surveys because they are unable to find the information or product they require. This is one way you can discover the “market gaps” that searchers are willing to pay for.

Willingness to take a survey is directly proportional to willingness to buy.

If searchers CANNOT find the desired information or features of their perceived need or problem – then this indicates a direction you can go. This is a powerful way to define your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) and set yourself apart from competitors with exclusive “must buy” features and benefits. Thus you obtain a pretty accurate product blueprint.

Features & Benefits

You can find out through surveys the exact features and benefits you must include in your product to make it SELL – no guessing required! This leads to a marketing blueprint. Discover the exact features, benefits, and language to focus on. With the right type of survey questions, your persuasion sales copy practically writes itself!

Market Segmentation

Markets can be divided into distinct groups made up of people who want similar things. For example, if you own a travel agency, some of the segments in your market might be:

• Retirees who want luxury accommodation and tours

• Families who are interested in kids’ activities

• Travelers on a budget

• Adventure travelers who want challenges and thrills

Each of these segments wants different things and will respond to different messages. To further clarify the concept of segments, here’s a hypothetical example of segments in the “dogs” market.

This example shows how each segment uses different keywords. This means you can keyword-target your advertising and SEO to put the right message in front of each segment.

It also shows how in many markets, segments are not exclusive, but progressive – one prospect may move through multiple segments over time and will need to be targeted differently.

• Segment 1: Someone is thinking of buying a puppy for her family. She searches on keywords like “family dogs”, “best dogs for kids”, and so on.
   
• Segment 2: Once the puppy is bought, searches will be on keywords such as “house training puppy” and “stop puppy chewing furniture”.
   
• Segment 3: When the dog is a bit older the owners may start to search on “dog obedience training”, “clicker dog training”, “teach dog to sit” and so on.
   
• Segment 4: Perhaps the owners will then want to teach the dog to do special tricks – searches might focus on “dog tricks”, “dog trick training”, and “teach dog to roll over”.

Monetizing Segments

To monetize, each of these segments could be included in one information product, or you could target them separately with different products. As your knowledge of a market increases your segments become much more sophisticated.

Market Segmentation > Segmentation and Keywords >