Audience segmentation: Everything you need to know in 2022

Your audience falls within a specific consumer demographic. However, this demographic can be divided even further using a number of background and behavioral characteristics. This is audience segmentation and—regardless of industry—is an effective way to target your audience with a more catered and personalized outreach.

What is audience segmentation?

Audience segmentation is a form of data-driven marketing that allows your sales team to create more tailored ads, sales pitches, and social media messaging. This kind of audience targeting is more effective than sending a uniform message across your entire consumer base.

When you segment your audience, you divide them into smaller subgroups. These smaller groups can be based on a number of demographic categories, such as geolocation, age, or income level. It can also be based on behavior and how they interact with your site.

What about advanced audience segmentation?

You may also have come across the term “advanced audience segmentation.” How is this different from regular segmentation? Advanced segmentation may combine two or more segment categories. Here are some examples:

Audience segmentation: Age 25 to 30

Advanced audience segmentation: Age 25 to 30, degree holder

Audience segmentation: Females

Advanced audience segmentation: Females, extroverted, made a purchase within the last seven days

How to segment your audience

Create and target audience segments using these steps:

1. Identify your audience segments

You should have more than one subgroup. This can be made up of regular or advanced audience segments, or both.

2. Identify the methods for segmenting your audience 

For demographic and geographic segments, you can acquire the information through the customers’ account profiles. To determine their hobbies and personality traits, have them fill out a quick survey and reward them for their time. You can acquire behavioral data by looking at your website analytics. 

3. Identify the marketing plan for each segment

The whole purpose of segmenting is to create a personalized marketing plan for each subgroup. Create a plan that specifically addresses the customers in their respective categories. The following section includes audience segments examples.

Types of audience segmentation and examples

Below are examples of subgroups you can establish for your audience segmentation framework. These include real-world marketing examples that may be applicable depending on your industry.

Geolocation segment

You can divide your audience based on their city of residence. This can be an effective form of audience segmentation marketing; geolocation has an influential role in an audience’s behavior and purchase patterns.

Examples:

• Advertise higher-end products to an audience in an affluent city.
• Advertise products based on the area’s climate. For instance, if you market to an international audience, you can market hot-weather apparel in Australia/New Zealand in December when these areas have their summer season.
• Add language options to your website—i.e., offer UK spelling if you have a strong UK audience base.

Demographic segment

There are a number of demographic variables you can use, such as age, gender, ethnicity, and educational background. Alter your message based on specific demographic ranges. 

Examples:

• For products geared toward women, promote heavily on Pinterest, which has a 79.5% female user base.
• For reaching a Generation Z demographic, use language that may be appealing to a younger audience, such as text-speak and emojis. 

Hobbies and interest segment

Through surveys, you can determine your consumers’ hobbies and general interests. These may be tied to the industry or may be completely independent of it.

Examples: 

• For audiences interested in sports, make a passing mention of an upcoming game on social media. Use this as a lead-in for a product. An apparel company, for instance, can mention how the brand’s polo shirt is fashionable for sports-related gatherings at bars.
• For audiences passionate about charity, create a “giving back” campaign where a portion of proceeds will go toward a non-profit organization. 

Psychographic segment

Psychographic patterns make up another segment that requires surveying your audience. This segment takes into account consumers’ pain points and motivation for doing business with your company. This may also include the audience’s general temperament. Are your consumers more introverted or extroverted? Are they natural leaders, or do they follow the crowd?

Examples:

• A B2B SaaS company may determine that a segment of its audience is spending too much time processing invoices. The company can mention the benefits of invoice automation and release a white paper that discusses the accuracy and time saved compared to manual invoice processing.
• For introverts, move away from the noise and bustle of social media and cold-calling. Instead, adopt a content-heavy and inbound approach, such as blogging or email marketing with an invitation to a free webinar.

Behavioral segment

Audience segmentation marketing should include some form of grouping by consumer behavior. This can encompass a wide range of behaviors, such as purchase history, login frequency, average site visit time, etc. 

Examples: 

• Send email reminders to consumers with a high cart abandonment rate.
• Send discounts or offers to inactive customers, or those deemed to be at high risk of churning.
• Send a related product offer for an audience segment that purchased a particular item.

Simplify audience segmentation with Lytics

Whether you create some or all of the audience segment groups above, segmentation is a time-intensive endeavor. Fortunately, you can automate much of the processes with the help of Lytics’ audience segmentation platform. Book a 30-minute call today and create your first audience groupings using our pre-built segmentation.