Market Core · Target Audience · Module
Segment value
What each segment is worth: what they spend, what they cost to acquire, and how long they stay — the number that decides where effort goes.
The idea
How it works
Revenue per segment is easy and misleading. Acquisition cost and retention vary enormously between segments, and the ranking by contribution is frequently the reverse of the ranking by revenue.
The calculation does not have to be precise. It has to be good enough to rank, and a rough figure per segment beats a precise one for the business as a whole.
Working with it
In practice
- 01
Calculate value and cost per segment
Aggregate figures conceal exactly the differences the segmentation exists to reveal.
- 02
Include retention, not just spend
A segment that spends more and leaves sooner can be worth less than one that spends less and stays.
- 03
Compare the two rankings
By revenue and by contribution. Where they differ, effort is probably in the wrong place.
- 04
Recalculate when acquisition costs move
Channel cost changes reorder the segments, and nobody notices until margin does.
One level in
The components of segment value
A component is something that exists afterwards which did not exist before — a deliverable or a mechanism, not an intention.
Rank segments by contribution and by revenue. Where the two orders differ, effort is in the wrong place.
The other modules in target audience
Segmentation
How the audience divides in ways that predict behaviour and permit separate treatment — the test being whether two segments would actually be served differently.
LearnThe profile
What each segment is actually like, assembled from evidence rather than from a workshop — descriptive enough to be recognised, honest enough to be wrong in public.
LearnWhere they are
Where each segment can actually be reached, in what state of attention, and at what cost — the half of audience work that makes the rest usable.
Learn