FAQs for Step 19: Segment Your Market
Q: I sell gourmet chocolate and anything goes when it comes to customers, who doesn’t love chocolate! In this case “all people” is a valid demographic right?
“All people” is never going to be an acceptable customer profile because…
- It too broad to be of any use for your market research, your sales projections, or your marketing.
- It’s never accurate or true.
- It doesn’t help you learn about your niches, your customers, your market.
- It always makes you sound like an idiot to anyone who knows anything about business and customers.
- Dragons and angel investors will throw you out of their office if you attempt to sell them on a customer base defined as “all people.”
With this in mind, we encourage you to research to determine what the conventional wisdom is on chocolate lovers, and to faithfully work your way through the categories noted in this step. We think you’ll arrive at a description much more conducive than “all people” for your research, your marketing and when the time comes, to selling your chocolates.
- Geographic–where they live or work. Are you selling from a storefront location? Will you sell via a website and ship to a broader market?
- Demographic–age group. What ages are those who buy the most chocolate? Specifically, what age groups will buy your chocolate?
- Psychographic–needs or wants.
- Behavioral–one way of defining or segmenting customers is by their openness to adopting or accepting new products.
- Innovators – more educated, more prosperous and more risk-oriented
- Early adopters – younger, more educated, tend to be community leaders
- Early majority – more conservative but open to new ideas, active in community and influence to neighbours
- Late majority – older, less educated, fairly conservative and less socially active
- Laggards – very conservative, oldest and least educated
- Business–type of business, earnings, number of employees
It’s important to keep in mind how segmenting your market becomes useful. Once you have a clearer idea of your customers, you can target them with your surveys in order to learn even more about them. And once you’re in business, the better you know your customers, the more effective you will be at reaching them with your marketing and advertising efforts, and ultimately the more effective you may be at selling your products and services to them.
Have a question? Need Help?
Email us at faqs@riskbuster.com
We welcome all questions, comments and feedback and look forward to hearing from you!