Why is Segmenting your Audience Important in Digital Marketing?

In this age of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, Big Data and the Internet of Things, we are suffering from information overload. As such, we disregard information that is not relevant to us and is packaged into easily digestible pieces.

The Internet has made marketing that much easier because it is has become much more affordable to send communications to your clients and prospective clients. Unfortunately, many have abused this characteristic of digital marketing and send all messaging to all members of their database. The result of this, unfortunately, is to turn people who find pieces of information to be irrelevant against the company.

This means that it is incredibly necessary to segment your audience and to send them messaging that is relevant to them.

What is audience segmentation?

When you segment your audience, you divide them into groups based on certain criteria. For example, you might divide them according to their age and how they use social media. Segmenting your audience is vital in the digital marketing space because customers are making purchasing decisions faster than ever and they will react quickly to the offers that you send them. This is why it is vital to send them offers that will appeal to them.

Customers also have more information at their disposal, and they don’t want to receive irrelevant digital marketing messages. Businesses need to ensure they know what customers are thinking and why they act the way they do. Otherwise, they will either place them in the wrong audience segment or miss the customer’s buying process completely.

Why is audience segmentation important?

Firstly, segmenting your audience helps to create a more effective digital strategy to target the right people. When you know how, where and why people are connecting with a brand, it makes it so much easier to tailor the solutions to the customer’s needs. It also increases the chance that they will buy through the strategy or channel the business first connected with them. So, for example, if the customer first connected with you by signing up for your e-mail newsletter, chances are good that they will buy from you through a targeted promotion that you e-mail to them.

Secondly, segmenting your audience allows businesses to offer their customers one-of-a-kind experiences. Audience segmentation can facilitate increased brand awareness and customer engagement. A business can sell specific products or services to the right type of client through personalisation and unique offerings. Customers want businesses to acknowledge that they are not the same as everyone else. They want to engage with messaging or offerings that speak to them directly.

Lastly, segmenting your audience builds customer relationships. You can not exactly build a lasting relationship with someone if you know nothing about them. Or if you keep talking to them about subjects that do not interest them. Audience segmentation means you can connect with customers through relevant and well-timed content for them.

And as a bonus, segmenting your audience will increase revenue! Remember that customers want to feel that they are special to you, that you go out of your way to make sure that they get what they need. This is a basic need of humans, which means that should you respond to this you will make them into loyal customers.

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