Segment of your imagination: 7 ways to fine tune your audiences

Marketing segmentation is the name of the game these days when it comes to putting your advertising dollar where it’s likely to produce the best ROI.

Back in the day, identifying your customer base meant old-fashioned market research and a good amount of guesswork. In the 21st century, however, sophisticated digital tools can scientifically deduce who will be most interested in your products, allowing you to nimbly shift your advertising, marketing, product mix and overall energy to where it will pay off the most. Even better, segmentation doesn’t have to be expensive.

Here are some ideas about where to put your media dollars to get the most bang for your buck:

• Google Analytics offers valuable insight into who’s visiting your website, where they’re located, what device they’re using, how much time they’ve spent, how often they come back, which pages and links they’re visiting, and which keywords they’re responding to.
• Pay-per-call campaigns earn their keep both by generating more calls to your business and by collecting data about the callers. For example, Dial800’s CallView360 software automatically records caller demographics while compiling cost per call, cost per lead, ROI, calling and selling patterns, closing rates and other details. And Dial800’s Intelligent Handshake can take that a step further by combining such data with algorithms to predict which callers are most likely to convert.
• Highly targeted Facebook ads cost as little as $1 a day, allowing you to experiment and then gauge responses from ads aimed toward different sub groups.
• Facebook Insights reports on who’s liking your pages and posts, helping you gauge visitor preferences.
• You can poll current or potential customers via online services including Survey Monkey, SurveyMonkey Audience, YouGov, EZquestionnaire or KeySurvey. Seek demographics and psychographics asking how they found your company, why they bought from you, how your product solves their problem and what brings them back. For B2B, delve into key info and pain points.
• Get a better handle on your actual customer types by compiling all your info and then creating fictional personas that include age; gender; job title and details; salary/household income; location (rural, urban, suburban); education; family; goals and challenges; values; buying habits; and common objections during the sales process.

Once you’re in the thick of segmentation, you can use that knowledge to apply strategy to other customer-facing elements of your business, including social media content; website FAQ pages, blogs and white papers; mail and email campaigns; and customer service practices.

In short, those seizing the day to make the most of audience data will be far better positioned to face their competition, now and into the future.

Find out more about CallView360® and Intelligent Handshake at www.dial800.com/contact/.