Segmentation (and Winning Elections)

Segmentation mean dividing your market into groups of people who want different things, then figuring out how to win their business.

You’re Running For President

Say you’re running for class president at your school. You view this as a marketing challenge, and want to be strategic about it, so the first thing you do is sit down with your best friend to make a plan.

First, you write down all the different groups of students who’ll be voting (the segments):

• The kids you know really well.
• The kids you know a little, through friends.
• The kids you don’t know at all.
• The kids who play sports.
• The kids who are really into academics.
• The kids who care a lot about social stuff.
• The kids who ride the bus.
• The kids who walk to school.

As you can see, these ‘segments’ are overlapping – you know a lot of the kids who play sports, but not all of them. And the kids who ride the bus are equally split between academics and social stuff.

For each segment, you try to figure out if you have a chance of winning those kids’ votes, if you make the effort.

And you decide that the top segments you should target are bus riders, sports-lovers, very social kids, and the kids you know through friends.

Why? Because they’re easy to reach with your message (e.g. flyers on the bus and at sports practices) and are already somewhat pre-disposed to like you (since you play sports, are social, and know their friends).

So that’s segmentation… mapping out the different groups of potential customers and figuring out which ones to focus on with your business (or marketing campaign).

Whatever you’re selling and however big (or small) your business is, you can do this same exercise and it will save you time and improve your results.

Meantime, good luck with the election… we believe in you.