Market Core · Target Audience · Module
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.
The idea
How it works
A segment earns its existence by changing something. If two groups are served identically, reached identically and priced identically, dividing them produces a slide rather than a decision.
Behavioural and needs-based divisions predict better than demographic ones, and demographic ones are easier to obtain — which is why most segmentation is demographic and most segmentation is useless.
Working with it
In practice
- 01
Test each division for consequence
Name what would be done differently for each segment. If nothing, merge them.
- 02
Prefer behaviour to description
What people do predicts what they will do. What they are mostly does not.
- 03
Keep the number small
Four segments that are acted on beat twelve that are described.
- 04
Check the segments are reachable separately
A segmentation you cannot target is a research finding rather than a plan.
One level in
The components of segmentation
A component is something that exists afterwards which did not exist before — a deliverable or a mechanism, not an intention.
Name what you would do differently for each segment. If the answer is nothing, they are one segment.
The other modules in target audience
The 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.
LearnSegment 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.
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