Without market segmentation, you can’t properly sell to your leads.
Lead segmenting is a vital task if you want to be successful in generating new customers for your business. Segmenting a list allows you to send more relevant sales materials to each lead and achieve better sales results. It can also save you costs by not sending irrelevant content to particular contacts.
As with any aspect of running a business, there are several options for you to choose from when segmenting a list. The only challenge for you is to decide which is best for your target audience and business.
1. By Gender
Men and women have different approaches to how they purchase items on the internet. They also have differing preferences to the products they buy. This is particularly the case for clothes e-retailers or entertainment sellers. By sorting out your leads into male / female groupings, you can concentrate your efforts on one divide to get better results with the right content style and products.
2. By Age
Every generation has a unique perspective on the world and with that comes different desires and behaviors. By sorting your business’ leads into their age groups, you can tailor content for certain viewpoints. You can even use this to encourage certain social media behaviors as certain age groups are more likely to use particular social media platforms.
3. By Location
Depending on your business model, you might have some services which are restricted based on where the customer is located. There is no point in sending content about products you can’t deliver. So by organizing leads by location, you can stop unnecessary work and orders being placed that you can’t fulfill.
4. By Current Customer Status
Not all your leads are going to be people you haven’t interacted with before. Some will already be customers that could be targeted for upselling or cross-selling campaigns. As it is always easier to sell to existing customers, this should be an important segmentation for your business.
5. By Job Role
Sometimes those that have signed up to your marketing list are not the decision makers. They might be influencers within the company, but they will never make the decision on the purchasing. These aren’t useless people; they can help spread news of your brand, convince those higher up of the benefits of using you or be useful in gaining new market intelligence. However, you should never try too hard to sell to these people.
6. By Qualifications
Your contact’s qualifications are an important metric. Those that have college degrees have different outlooks on life than those who only graduated from high school. By knowing this, you can determine what level of writing you should be applying and how people will respond to certain content. Then you can target certain segments with the right pitch.
7. How They Became a Lead
This is another segmentation that can be very useful in creating relevant content. Businesses use a variety of ways to generate leads, for example, downloadable content on their website, collecting names at trade shows or just meeting someone on the street. These are all valid, but each avenue tends to attract people who are looking for different things. By segmenting how they were introduced to your business, you can determine the best products to market to them.
8. By Their Behaviors Towards Sale Materials
If someone is not opening your emails or other sales material regularly, you need to change your tactics with them. It is always useful to have an inactive list and then use that to try to re-engage with the list.
9. By Their Behaviors Towards Your Offers
There are numerous types of customers, but there are always a few that need more guidance than the rest. Sometimes it is to help them implement something or to make a purchase. By separating this group into a list, you can be prepared for their questions and create sales material that is more helpful to them.
10. By Spending Behavior
If you have got customers who are more frivolous than others, then it is best to separate these customers into a different list. These are the people who you can market more impulse buys to and be sure of better results.
Conclusion
There are numerous ways you can segment your sales list. By doing it properly, you can achieve better results and increase your revenue and profits. Just be sure you don’t segment so small that you have too few people on any one list.
How do you segment your leads? How has it been effective?
Let us know in the comments.
Take Action:
- Have a review of your lead segmentation.
- Re-segment your leads based on the advice above.
Segmentation can help you generate more sales from your leads. Find out more about how it can help your business here.