Whether it’s segmenting your email database to maximise your latest campaign’s impact, creating or using different interest groups on LinkedIn or Facebook, or segmenting your Twitter followers into useful lists, never has targeting content to the right end recipient been more important. Here’s why:
We need to cut through a blizzard of content
There are thousands of pieces of content being created for inbound marketing every day – from blogs and vlogs to instructional videos and podcasts. Many social media users are experiencing content fatigue. How are they supposed to see your content amid all of this? The answer is, of course, to target them carefully with the right content, at the right time.
In an age of personalisation, we still need demographics
Personalised content delivered on the device of a customer’s choice is the future. To create content for individuals, we have to know many things about them: from how they socialise and date, to how they bank or prefer to pay for their weekly grocery shop. This profile of our customer is constantly being gathered and updated from social media likes, the information gathered by cookies and past interactions with us. However, that personalisation comes as a layer on top of the information their demographic group and location also give us, rather than at the expense of it. Campaigns cannot be targeted at every single individual.
We need to make sense of our own data
To do this, we have to segment it into usable pieces, giving us valuable information which we can interpret for our target market. That’s how we measure the success of our campaigns, and decide where we should target the next one. It’s how we decide whether our website content is working for us, or our blog needs a re-boot.
We need to focus
Segmenting our market allows us to focus on which sets of customers are the most profitable, which are the most prevalent, and whether there are any untapped segments a different marketing approach might reach. It’s a key tool for potential expansion, and it is important when it comes to customer retention.
It improves communication
Customers feel we are talking directly to them, not shouting in a crowded room. It helps them feel we understand their problems, and can solve them. It builds brand loyalty and trust. Email a link to your latest, carefully-targeted blog post to the right segment, and you’ll reinforce the existing relationship and increase the likelihood of future custom. Target your website copy carefully, and you’ll ease prospects from awareness to decision-making.