How to Segment Your Target Market on Social Networks

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How to Segment Your Target Market on Social Networks by InsideView

Segmentation isn't necessarily a new concept, but it is a crucial discipline to master in today's sales climate. Actually, segmentation can be traced way back to the 1950s when companies both small and large began targeting specific groups of people with attractive marketing and advertising campaigns.

At its core, segmentation is about relevance. Let's face it, we're not going to be continuously relevant to everyone within our massive pool of current, past and potential customers. No matter how much we attempt to generalize or universalize our marketing messages, we're just not going to reach everyone. So, not only is segmentation helpful for moving customers through our various sales funnels, but its also necessary for survival.
The Inherent Value of Segmentation

Modern segmentation is heavily steeped in the ever-changing world of social media. Today's customers are equal parts mobile and social-media savvy.

Using social-powered tools found in platforms such as Google+, Facebook and LinkedIn allows you to meet your customers and prospects where they spend their time online. Social media also allows you to understand where and how varying segments congregate online, and exactly what they talk about.
Leveraging Social Media for Segmenting Your Target Market

The power of social media segmentation is all about the platform your customer uses. Best marketing practice says you should execute a marketing campaign on all platforms. Your customers may not all be on the same platform, but they're not necessarily on every platform either. You could spend an inordinate amount of time building a Twitter campaign that delivers absolutely nothing because your customers aren't on Twitter. Every market is different, and every customer is different. Marketers love social media because it allows them to create customized experiences for their customers. If some of your customers are on Twitter and some of them don't even have LinkedIn profiles, you can customize campaigns so each customer feels like one of a kind. You can build a Twitter campaign and an email campaign to reach a broader group of prospects.

Testing is the best way to determine where your prospects are. You'll never know until you run a campaign on every platform, so take the time to execute a campaign on all platforms and focus future efforts on platforms that generate the most leads.

Uniformity is a thing of the past. Welcome to the age of elastic market segmentation.
The Segmentation Ball is in Your Court

You can segment by geographic location, age, sex, online search/engagement behaviors, and just about any other user-defining characteristic you can dream up, and you can segment even further through platform. You may find that your Bay Area prospects prefer Twitter and your Midwest prospects prefer phone calls. The more pinpointed your segments, the better your results.