Not everyone is going to need what your eCommerce business has to offer. By creating a customer profile, you can identify those people who do. When you create a customer avatar that identifies the individual who would benefit most from your products or services, you narrow down the market. There are many cases where you may feel the need to further segment and create multiple profiles.
- You have multiple product lines that address different needs and solve different problems. These would serve different types of people.
- There are significant differences in your market’s demographics. You need to create content for these various groups of people. A great example of this is for my magazine PHOTOSHOOT. Although my largest audience is photographers, I also have models, makeup artists, and designers who subscribe. Another is on my eCommerce Made Easy program, which is mostly UK and French-based women entrepreneurs. I, therefore, offer content relevant to both company setups.
- You want to separate an “A-List” of your biggest buyers and brand advocates.
Segmenting also gives you a better general understanding of your market, which is always helpful.
How Do You Segment Your Audience?
There are many ways to segment your audience depending on your goals. These include:
Demographics
You may have customers who live in different areas, represent two or more age groups, have various income levels, and so on. Many businesses find it useful to separate into geographic areas, such as country or language.
Psychographics
If you have customers motivated by various needs, you might segment your market. People may have vastly different personalities, lifestyles, and core values.
Buying Behavior
It is useful to know who buys a large amount of product versus who only purchases small-ticket items. Many businesses segment into new audience members who haven’t purchased yet, those who have made a purchase, and repeat purchasers. You could further segment into those more likely or less likely to buy.
Do You Need to Segment?
It’s always useful to segment, but there are some specific reasons why you may feel the need to. If you have a customer profile already, you may find a growing number of people in your audience who don’t fit this profile. Maybe people from another geographic area are starting to follow you. You may need to identify this second group.
You may want to segment because of changes in your business. Maybe you’re launching a new product category or branching into a new niche.
How to Segment Your Audience
You’ve already created a customer profile that identifies your ideal target audience member. Start over and create a second one, identifying the new group’s demographics, psychographics, and buying behavior. Then, identify which members belong in this new category.
You might separate new and repeat buyers by offering a second email list. Once a person makes their first purchase, they’re automatically moved to the new list where you promote higher-priced offers.
You may create traffic streams for each segment. One stream leads to one landing page, the next to another page that’s tailored to the second demographic. These pages would then have targeted offers for each group.
There’s really no end to what you can do. You can keep segmenting and drill down to each group within your market so you can offer content and products that better suit them.
Do you want more strategies for learning about your customers? Join my next FREE ‘Start and Grow an Online Business’ challenge which shows you how to create and grow a profitable eCommerce business
