Did you know that…
• 35% Americans prefer their coffee black while 65% prefer it with cream and sugar
• 65% of coffee consumption takes place during breakfast hours.
• Women think coffee is a great way to relax
• On the other hand, men think that coffee helps get the job done
• Seattle has 10 times more coffee stores per 100,000 residents than the United States has overall.
We all love and swear by our daily cuppa.
But, what differs is how we like it.
Humans are a most unpredictable species for the simple reason that each one has different tastes. No wonder, then, that marketing and sales teams have a tough time dealing with people.
As the barrage of more and more prospect information is being dumped on us, we find ourselves struggling to cut through the clutter and determine what information matters.
The answer to this problem is simple: Segmentation of information (and as a result, segmentation of prospects)
For the next three weeks, beginning today, we will look at
• How to segment prospects and customers
• How to approach each segment with personalized sales and marketing campaigns
• Benefits of segmentation
Today we are going to look at: How you can segment prospects and leads
Truth be told, there aren’t any hard and fast rules about segmenting. But there are some methods of segmenting that have proven to yield better results than others.
You can segment your prospects based on
1. Attributes
Attributes refer to the general characteristics of your prospects. Most commonly, these are the basic demographics such as region, gender, age group, income, education, industry types, etc.
For instance, a target group of CFO’s from different industries will have similar needs with respect to finance software and tools. They have a common interest in being updated constantly about what peers are using to make their finance departments function better. A software organization can easily tap into this group with similar job functions and cater to them.
Job functions are one of the best and concrete ways to segment your prospects if you are working in a business-to-business (B2B) environment. Based on similar functional attributes you may be able to segment a major portion of your prospect base.
2. Behavior
Behavior is usually defined by a prospect’s tendency to act in a given situation. Unlike attributes, behavior is highly dynamic. For instance, if a buyer is looking for sports shoes on some online site today, this pattern is bound to stay only until the buyer finds what she wants.
In order to effectively identify and segment key attributes and behaviors, a basic requirement is a Sales Enablement software that can easily gather, collate, organize and make prospect data actionable.
You should be able to-
Segment based on stages of the buying cycle
Segmenting prospects depending on where they stand in the sales cycle allows you to create highly personalized campaigns.
Top of the sales funnel
The prospects in this stage are either unaware or slightly aware of your product. To generate an interest in your product at this stage, you must generate useful content. At this stage you need the kind of content that answers generic pain points of your typical buyer persona. For this, you need a solid understanding of your buyer persona and their related industry. Your Sales enablement system should allow you to create social media posts and blog posts on a frequent and automated basis so you can always keep your prospects engaged.
Middle of the funnel
By this stage, a marketing automation platform should separate the solid prospects from the ones that need to be nurtured further. These prospects are ones who have shown considerable interest in you. You now need to address their specific pain points based on what they want to know from you. A system that can track and identify the areas of interest of prospects will be able to do this for you. Based on which of your content, email or any offering they pay attention to, you can sort these prospects accordingly.
Bottom of the funnel
This is where your segmentation matters the most. Once you have narrowed down the most interested leads, you MUST be able to interact with them in a highly personalized manner. Be sure that you have a very good system that can allow your sales reps to respond with precision. Also, these reps will need a detailed account of these leads from the beginning of their purchase cycle. Hence, the focus is on enabling your sales reps using an excellent Sales Enablement Software.
If prospect segmentation makes a marketers life easier, customer segmentation is a sales person’s ally.
Segmenting your existing customers is a great way to understand their buying patterns better. This method of segmentation is helpful in predicting future buying patterns.
In the next part, we will be discussing more about how you can approach each segment.
