by Sameer KapoorSegmentation of the customers is an initial and important part of digital or any other type of marketing Campaigns. Whenever you classify your customers or target audience in different segments as per their common behavior and attributes, your work becomes easier. Grouping or Clustering of the customers on the basis of demographics only does not work that effectively now-a-days. You need to group your customers on the basis of other factors too in order to provide them with quality personalized services and achieve your business objectives. The Right sized grouping of your target audience not only save resources but also helps in delivering them the right services like banking, insurance, and brokerage to satisfy them with your services.
Now there are several ways of segmentation that you can do in order to achieve your business goals. Therefore, let’s explore some of the important segmentation that you can easily do for your business.
First Time Visitors
What a first time visitor look for in your website will vary immensely as compared to the any returning visitor. Once you prepare the segment or the group of your first time visitor then you needs to prepare a plan to attract their attention for longer duration on your website. A first time visitor may lose interest on your website very easily if the relevant information is not present systematically on your website. Any communication, through sms, email, whatsapp or Social Media ,to such newer audience can easily be taken as spam unless the it is presumed to be relevant or interesting. A subtle introduction to your service followed by explanation is always a better way to reach first time visitor and convert him in to a potential customer.
Current/Existing customers
Current Customers may be said to be those customer are availing your services as of today. A good number of current customers is an achievement in itself which a business win with lots of hard work and with your improving skills to suit the customer requirements. A lot of time and energy is spent in getting your current customers so when they your website or premise, it is our duty that they must be recognized, even if they have not logged in. A separate section, with processes and links relevant for existing customers may do the trick. Try to answer the possible question, that may come to customers mind, by the way of visible keywords leading to service links. Generally seen banks with long IVR which is a big irritant with lots of options. This is what should be definitely avoided. For their financial and banking needs they have chosen your service so prior recognition and understanding their expectation will help you to maintain a long term relationship with them.
Past Customers
All those customers you have used your products or services previously may be referred to as Past customers. In Financial Industry or Banking, you may also refer to your now inactive customers. The customer who have got the experience of using your products and services so you need not to educate them about your services. It may be a bad experience or simply a lack of communication which led to the inactivity. For Sales products like Loans, Insurance, it may be a good experience also. Telling them about the complementary services that you can provide them so that they can get a better experience from the previous experience. You may also try to gather their feedback in order to make your service better in future. Remember a straight cross sell or up-sell may worsen your perception, so think twice on strategy after you collate the data.
Potential Customer
These are the people who are not the first time visitors and also not converted into a Customer but who are interested to use your service or product. There may be another kind of audience who are interested in seeking your service however may have some doubt and confusion in their mind regarding your services. Clearing their doubts or clarifying about your offering makes its a simple for making decisions. A good marketing person knows such doubts before hand and try to make a crystal clear communication about that. A potential customer always try to compare a standard features from multiple service providers unless he /she gets a very appealing reason to straight buy yours.
Influencers
These are the bunch of connected people who are often a good source of references to the business. These reference sources may become your potential customers or interested in your services however they may want to test your service quality or capabilities. And to do this, they have referred someone else rather seeking the service by themselves. If you can satisfy the referred person then the referral may become your potential customers in the long run and also bring along lots of others. While communicating with such person, an extra care may taken. A small value add may be much more powerful than spending lakhs of marketing.
Abandoned customers
With E-commerce coming into play, businesses started to realize about this segment. They are bunch of people who came to platform, opted for a product, added to cart and then left. Now these may not potential customers anymore and definitely not the customers. If we think carefully, we also find such people in our business also. The people whom we clarified all doubts but still not been able to convert. While communicating with these customers, we do not know whether they have bought the product they were looking for or not. An ideal marketing communication should make an appealing offer to make them buy today only along with complimentary products. Even reminding them to fill up the form (which they left half way) and complete the entire procedure could be a good idea for next few days.
Hope while reading this articles you have been able to visualize these six different sets of customers. Time and again, we meet people from these different sets however communicates in a single fashion.
While talking to business owners, I always gets a reply that we handle these segments differently but My next question remains unanswered. “Does your business processes and marketing follow that”
To provide your audience a better and personalized services you need to understand the needs and the preferences of your customers in a better way. The solution of every problem is not the same in the same manner the requirements of each customers is not similar you need to handle case wise. However, Customer segmentation helps in grouping these people in sets and build effective marketing and communication around that.
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