One of the basic principles of marketing is that if you're marketing to everyone, you're marketing to no one. There are seven billion people in the world, and there is no chance that every single one is interested in what you're selling.
The same goes for your customers. Let's say you have thousands of customers who are happy with what you sell. They all have different needs and wants. Personalizing your approach to attract a specific customer is a sure way to get their attention and their money.
But we can't adjust sales and marketing to every single customer. So, we do the next best thing - use customer segmentation. Let's find out how.
What is customer segmentation?
Customer segmentation is grouping your customers based on different things - age, location, activities, previous purchases, etc. It lets you break down your entire target audience into smaller, easier-to-manage groups that you can sell and market to.
For example, you could segment your customers into those who bought before and those who are first-time buyers. You may also segment them into those who came from content marketing vs. paid ads. The options are endless, which is why you need to take customer segmentation seriously. It can give you massive returns if done right.
1. Track your customer data
You need data to segment your customers. Start by collecting information beyond just names. When someone buys from you, ask for more details like their age, interests, why they chose you, their industry, and company size. What you collect depends on what you sell and who your customers are.
Store this data properly in a CRM system. This makes segmentation easier and helps you create personalized marketing later. With Wonit's CRM integration, you can pull client details directly from HubSpot, Salesforce, or Pipedrive and automatically create highly personalized proposals using all the relevant information from your CRM.
2. Create buyer personas
Once you have data in your CRM, you need to organize it. That's where buyer personas come in. A buyer persona represents a specific type of customer with all their characteristics. For example, one persona might be a B2B marketing agency, aged 25-45, that needs to create multiple proposals each month with quick turnaround times.
You don't need dozens of personas, but identify as many as makes sense. Include details like age, location, spending habits, industry, business size, and the main problem they need to solve. The more specific your personas, the better they work for your marketing and sales.
3. Send targeted emails
Email marketing consistently delivers one of the best ROIs available. Getting customer email addresses is key to securing more sales. Now that you have your data in a CRM and buyer personas created, you can segment your email list. Instead of one generic email to everyone, send targeted messages to specific segments.
Here's an example: If freelancers are part of your audience, they're price-sensitive and may switch easily. At Christmas, send different emails based on their status. Offer former customers a discount to return. Send current customers on basic plans an upgrade offer with more features. The power of email marketing is sending the right offer to the right person at the right time.
4. Use social media ads
Remember those emails you collected? Once you have an email list (segmented by different criteria), you can upload it to Facebook to create highly targeted ads.
Once you import your email list, you'll be able to target that exact audience on Facebook. You can show them video or image ads and capture their attention in many ways.
What's more, you can get a bigger audience using the one you already have. Upload your emails to Facebook to create a lookalike audience based on the characteristics of the people on your list. It's much easier than setting up targeting on your own.
5. Upsell and cross-sell
Getting a new customer costs almost 5 times more than selling to an existing one. If segmentation works for new customers, it works even better for current ones. You already know what they bought and what they might want next, so you're perfectly positioned to offer more.
The key is knowing what to offer and to whom. You can only do this with segmented customer lists. Base your upsell and cross-sell offers on the data you have. Wonit's engagement tracking shows you who viewed which sections and for how long, so you know exactly when to follow up.
Conclusion
Customer segmentation may seem complicated and not worth your time. In reality, it can be one of the most useful things you can do for your marketing and sales. The earlier you start segmenting your customers, the better for your business. When you combine smart segmentation with tools that help you act on that data - like creating personalized proposals for each segment in minutes instead of hours - you'll see real results in your conversion rates and revenue. Get early access to Wonit and start turning your customer data into winning proposals.