Having a well-defined target market or niche is the first important step towards success in your small business. Previously, we emphasized the things you should know about your customers. This time we will dig deeper and present the details of target audience segmentation. You may want to copy the following bases for segmentation:
Demographic
- Gender
- Age
- Education Level
- Monthly and Annual Income
- Occupation/Profession
- Marital Status
- Nationality
- Religion
- Social Class
- Number of children
- Family lifecycle
Geographic
- Region
- Seasonality
- Population size
Buying Behaviors
- Key benefits they are looking for
- Usage rate or how often do they buy
- Decision-making process
- Key motivators for buying
- Readiness to buy
Psychographics or Lifestyle Factors
- Attitudes (are they socially-conscious, family-oriented, fun-loving, conservative, liberal, eco-friendly logo designs, trendsetter or trend follower?)
- Activities/Hobbies
- Interests
- Opinions
- Values
While it helps if you can conduct a formal market research, you can still gather these things through customer feedback and membership to related associations or groups. You will find several groups of customers as you do this exercise. Instigator Blog suggests that the next step is to identify your best customers and create a persona to capture their essence.
