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 can't segment your customers if you don't know anything about them. The first step is to get data about your customers beyond just their name. Once someone buys from you, ask for more information. You'll already know their name and address, but you can also ask for:
Age
Interests
Why they chose you over competitors
Industry
Company size
Depending on what you sell and who you sell to, you'll want to collect different customer data.
Since this data is useless if it can't be sorted and stored properly, it's a great idea to use a CRM to keep it all in one place. This makes segmentation easier and helps you create personalized marketing messages later.
With Wonit's CRM integration, you can pull client details directly from HubSpot, Salesforce, or Pipedrive. When you need to create a proposal, just ask AI like "create a proposal for @hubspot:DealName" and the app creates a highly personalized proposal for that deal by fetching all important info and interactions from CRM.
2. Create buyer personas
You now have lots of data stored in your CRM. But it means very little on its own. You have all the data but no way to categorize it. For true segmentation, you need to create buyer personas.
A buyer persona is a specific type of customer that buys from you, with all their traits. For example, one buyer persona could be a marketing agency in the B2B sector. They're aged 25-45, and they need to create multiple proposals per month for different clients with quick turnaround times.
You don't need countless buyer personas, but the more you can identify, the better. This makes it easier to send targeted marketing messages to those personas specifically.
Some information to include in your buyer persona:
Age
Location
Spending history
Industry
Business size and type
The main problem they're trying to solve
Buyer personas are a great way to see how well you know your customers. The more specific they are, the more valuable they are for your marketing and sales.
3. Send targeted emails
Year after year, email is one of the most powerful marketing channels out there. In terms of ROI, very few tactics compare to email marketing. Getting your customers' email addresses is one of the best ways to secure more sales and income.
You've done two things: added all your data to a CRM and created buyer personas. Based on these personas, you now have segments of your total email list. Instead of sending one email to everyone, you now send highly targeted emails to segments of your list.
Let's take an example. Say you have freelancers as part of your target audience. They're volatile customers who can leave easily. They're also concerned about price because every dollar matters.
Every Christmas, you could send your freelancer customers two different emails. If they used to be a customer but aren't anymore, offer them a discount to come back. If they're already on the cheapest plan, send them an email to upgrade to a higher plan with more features.
The value of email marketing is in segmenting your list and sending the right offer 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
Did you know that it's almost 5x more expensive to get a new customer than to sell to an existing one? If segmentation works well for new customers, it's even better for those already paying you.
Since you already know what your customers bought and what they might be interested in, you're in the perfect position to offer them more.
The key is knowing what to offer and who to offer it to. The only way to do that is to have segmented lists of customers. You can then base the upsell and cross-sell offers on the data you have.
With Wonit's engagement tracking, you can see who viewed what sections and for how long. This data tells you exactly who's engaged with your proposals and 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.