The Importance of Profiling and Segmentation in Targeted Customer Acquisition

Companies want to act confidently in their marketing campaigns.  Profiling and segmentation is all about understanding your customers and prospects so you can identify "look-alikes" and message effectively to those “look-alikes.”  Most companies need new customers, and profiling and segmentation can certainly assist in that effort.  Profiling is the process of describing the characteristics (buying behavior, company or individual attributes, psychographics and demographics) of your customers.  Once you know their profiles, you can then go buy lists or advertise in places that target those unique profiles.  For example, you may learn that the top 5% of your most profitable customers have been in business for 5 years, enjoy revenues over $5 million, employ 20-50 individuals, and work in the retail industry.  A good marketing campaign would entail identifying other prospects having these same five characteristics.

However, profiling may not be provide enough detail, as the bucket of companies with these characteristics may still be too great; that’s where segmentation plays a role.  Given 200 customers with the above five broad characteristics, segmentation can take your customer intelligence to the next level by describing the similarities and differences even within that group.  For example, after conducting a segmentation analysis, you discover that the group of 200 retailers can be bucketed into (1) entrepreneurs who are conservative CEO females who are over 60 years of age, and (2) CFO retail entrepreneurs who are liberal males between 40-55 with a high risk tolerance.  Now the marketing campaign, and the marketing messages, can be specifically focused on these two groups.  Sixty year old females should be provided messages and visuals that will likely be quite different than risk taking males of 40-55 years of age.

How well do you understand your existing customers and prospects?  If the answer is, "not that well," than Statistics Solutions' data analytic suite of services can help you describe your customers and prospect so you can confidently and effectively conduct your marketing campaigns.  Send us an email or call us at 877-437-8622 to learn more.