Market Segmentation – Know Your Market

Written by: Gary Horsman

Know Your Market

Everything that you do with your website, your web copy, your offer and call to action will work better if you construct a message and an offer to your specific markets. To define your markets properly is one of the most fundamental concepts in marketing and your choice of which approach to use needs to be considered in terms of the specific market segment you want to reach. This is fundamental for your business and needs to be reflected in your website.

Market segmentation is about understanding the needs of your customers and how they decide between one offer and another. This insight is used to form groups of customers who share the same or very similar value criteria. A company needs to determine which groups of customers it is best suited to serve and which product and service offers will both meet the needs of its selected segments and also outperform the offers of the competition.

The primary objective of market segmentation needs to be focused on how to win and retain the customers you want to serve.

As a business you need create a great match between benefits sought by customers and those offered by your business. You need to obtain a marketplace advantage within the market segment. To create differentiation consider the appropriate mix of product features, price, promotion and ease of use to do business with you. For the customer, this enables them to understand benefits, cost (or value), perceived value to doing business with you and convenience; in other words, a customer value proposition.

A customer’s view of market segmentation simply means — meet my needs!

When choosing between competing products and services, customers select the proposition that meets their needs better than any other. To win a customer and market share a business must ensure that their offer meet these needs better than any other at a price they perceive as providing superior value for money (which does not necessarily mean it has to be the cheapest).

Know your markets . . . know your customers . . . this will provide you with invaluable insights into how to win a customer’s business and how to reach them. This is crucial. By really understanding your customer’s situation your will gain insights into their motivations. You will know what language to use, what offer to make and will close more business and have more fun doing it.