What is the difference between segment and channel

Customer segmentation is a key part of a marketing strategy: when you know your audience, you can put together a marketing mix that meets the exact needs of every visitor in that targeted segment. These actions traditionally cover four areas, known as the 4 Ps: Product, Price, Promotion and Place. Segmentation involves creating homogenous groups made up of individuals with identifiable common characteristics.

These might be place of residence, age, lifestyle or even how they behave on your website: these are what we call segmentation criteria. The individuals within a same segment are supposed to have the same expectations and should react in a similar way to an offer, type of content or a specific message.

By cross-referencing different types of data, you can obtain a more in-depth analysis of your customers. This type of segmentation is based on the geolocation of your visitors and is one of the simplest criteria. It enables you to target your marketing actions based on where your visitors are or on weather conditions. For example, the international sports retailer Sportmaster has chosen to segment its audience according to their geolocation and local weather. It suggests products that meet the immediate needs of visitors.

Demographic segmentation is the most commonly used criteria, since it requires information that can be collected easily and that enable you to quickly target a potential market. These criteria include gender, age, nationality, education, profession, income or family situation.

For example, fashion websites commonly segment their audience by gender, i. Psychographic segmentation focuses on the lifestyle of visitors: their interests, personalities, values, beliefs and opinions. Behavioral segmentation relies on the way visitors interact with the website.

Some data depends on their immediate online behavior online while other data depends on their past offline behavior offline when dealing with the brand. For example, to offer its visitors targeted deals, French supermarket chain Auchan relies on the user journeys on its website to segment its audience.

To a large extent, this data overlaps with the segmentation criteria described earlier. Traditional mass marketing enables you to find a compromise, satisfying the greatest number of people with the same offers. In comparison, segmentation enables you to zero in on the expectations of each customer.

Segmenting your market essentially analyzes who is part of that audience in detail and what characteristics you observe among your customers. It also enables you to understand which groups are the most loyal to the brand or spend the most, are the least loyal, etc. This will ultimately enable you to offer your visitors an improved experience and to therefore retain your customers. It seems difficult, even impossible, to increase your prices market-wide overnight.

However, by using a segmented approach you can identify the groups of people who are prepared to pay a little more for a specific uplift to your products or services. With a untargeted campaign that goes out to your whole market, the average success rate will be lower than if you successfully aim a suitable and differentiated campaign at several sub-groups.

Essentially it is more effective to optimize segment by segment than it is to optimize for the entire market. The "a priori" method, also known as rule-based segmentation , consists in manually dividing your audience into homogenous subsets according to pre-defined criteria. The criteria can be chosen based on the results of your data analysis or simply by using common sense.

For example a clothing brand could decide to segment its audience according to the gender and geolocation of its visitors. So, a woman living in London and visiting the website on 1st December would be presented with winter coats, whereas a man living in Spain who visited the website in the month of June would be shown swimming trunks.

Where do you start? To use this method, you already need to have an idea of the criteria that are relevant for segmenting your audience. The more detailed your market knowledge, the better chance you have of achieving efficient segmentation.

Limitations: This method may prove inaccurate, since a woman living in London and visiting the website in December could very well be looking to buy swimming trunks for her son who swims. Instead, we observe the similarities between visitors and then group them together according to those similarities.

These are not fixed criteria age, geolocation, interests, etc. This approach reveals actual resemblances rather than hypothetical ones. This is a significant improvement, but it still provides a reactive view vs. Here are three reasons you should do this type of proactive segmentation: You and your distributors only have so much time and resource to manage partners. Then, they ask the distributor to recruit, reactivate, or re-engage with all the rest.

Know who they are and prioritize them with the right offer. This type of data will provide information on the other vendors who you are competing with. To topple another vendor from one of these partner you have to have a VERY strong value proposition and extremely good reason to do it. Relevant Content. These partners typically have 3 common complaints. One is price. The second is incentive. The vendors that can cut through the noise, and fine-tune the offering to just what these partners WILL need, WHEN they need it, will drive better loyalty and drive quicker revenues.

Related posts. I Am In! Ask her:. I think she was a FastTrac attendee with Tom Ledbetter. You may want to ask about that, too. This is also the chance to talk about Ashlye while waiting for Tina to call or after. What is a Customer Segment?

Customer segments are the community of customers or businesses that you are aiming to sell your product or services to.

Customers can be segmented into distinct groups based on needs, behaviors and other traits that they share. It is critically important to match your customer segment to your value proposition in order to be successful. An organization can categorize consumers into distinct groups if they have the following characteristics;.

The customer groups have a particular need which justifies the creation of a product to match this need. The group needs a separate Distribution Channel to be reached.

There is a very clear difference in the level of profitability each group represents for the organization. Each consumer group feels strongly enough to pay for a different version of the product or service, tailored to their preferences. What are the types of Customer Segments? Mass Market - A large majority of the population that has a common problem or need that requires fulfillment.

Products catering to the mass market to not really need to be defined into small customer segments. Ex: A refrigerator company has a large market because people do not require a lot of differentiation in their refrigerators.

Niche Market - A customer segment with defined characteristics and specific needs. Products are highly specialized and tailored. EX: supplier-buyer relationships such as those between automobile parts manufacturers who are extremely dependent on automobile manufacturers for sale of their products.

Segmented - very small variations in customer needs and requirements, but company still created different value propositions and distribution channels to cater to these small differences.

Diversified - Customer segments have very different needs and wants. Ex: Amazon starting by selling books and now has a very diversified market. Ex: a credit card company, it is not just imperative that customers opt to use their credit cards but equally important for stores to accept their credit card.

If either segment fails, the other will automatically follow suit. Segmenting consumers enables marketing teams to stretch budgets and make the most of marketing dollars by reaching the most ideal visitors who are likely to become leads, without wasting money on impressions that will never turn into conversions.

Demographic segmentation is segmenting the market based on certain characteristics of the audience i. Combining various customer segmentation criteria has the potential to reach a very targeted niche market and drive sales while maximizing the value of every marketing dollar spent.