How to Segment Your Audience for Demand Generation Success
When you have a population as huge and diverse as California’s, precise San Diego demand generation is everything. It includes carefully segmenting your audience and matching your message to their needs and intent to reach the customers you are actually aiming for.
This blog post guides you through the basic steps of audience segmentation:
- Dig deep into your target market.
- Choose your segmentation criteria.
- Create a buyer’s persona.
- Craft and align your content with the customer’s journey.
- Analyze your data and refine the segments.
Read the guide below if you are ready to increase your conversion and support your lead generation strategies. Let’s go!
1. Dig Deep into Your Target Market
The Pepsi ad featuring Kendall Jenner was a major flop. It was highly political, controversial, and did not resonate with its audience. Your business might face the same problem if you do not know the target market.
Who are you selling to? Is it enough to say that you want to attract older people if you are opening an urgent care clinic in Carlsbad? Not if you want to attract high-quality leads.
You must dig deep and gather information to get a more holistic picture of your prospects or leads. Narrowing this large demographic to the granular level shows that their circumstances, needs, and preferences differ. You need the following:
- Zero-party data, which people voluntarily provide for you. This can include names, e-mail addresses, and phone numbers. Because these details are given freely, they are most likely accurate.
- First-party data, which you obtain from your analytics tools and customer relationship management (CRM) platforms. This type of data provides more comprehensive information about your leads. What pages do they visit? How long do they stay? How do they access your website? Where does your traffic come from?
- External-party data, which can come from partners (second-party), such as a Gaslamp Quarter hostel sharing data with a travel agency. They can also be from sources not related to your industry: government statistics, reports, and scientific studies. These sources provide a broader perspective on market trends and other factors influencing a prospect’s buying decision.
2. Choose Your Segmentation Criteria
Customer segmentation is time-consuming, complicated, and expensive. Big companies spend thousands of dollars for a study that can take six months or longer. Work with a San Diego demand generation team with the latest resources, market expertise, and industry knowledge to shorten this time.
Even though many tools have artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) capabilities to streamline the process, you still have to make sense of the data. The demand generation teams will know how to make the best of the latest technology. They will also know the best clustering models to use.
Usually, these experts group leads according to the following segments (keep in mind that they can use one or several of these criteria):
| Segment | When to Use It | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Demographic | Basic targeting and launching of general consumer products | Age, gender, family size, income, occupation, education, religion, nationality |
| Geographic | When your product or service varies by location or is affected by factors such as seasons | Country, region, state, city, urban vs. rural areas, climate |
| Psychographic | For a deeper understanding of your target audience’s lifestyle, especially for niche marketing campaigns and lifestyle products | Lifestyle (e.g., urban dwellers, outdoor enthusiasts), personality traits, values and beliefs, activities and interests |
| Behavioral | When introducing loyalty programs, targeting based on purchase history, or re-engaging past customers | Usage rate (heavy users vs. light users), loyalty status, readiness to purchase (e.g., intent), benefits sought, customer-journey stage |
| Firmographic | Mainly for business-to-business (B2B) markets | Industry or sector, company size, location, stage in the business lifecycle |
| Value-based | When prioritizing marketing resources | High-value vs. low-value customers, long-term customers vs. one-time purchasers |
3. Create a Buyer’s Persona
Now that you have extensive customer data, you are ready to make a buyer’s persona. Using well-crafted personas can power up your marketing plan, especially your B2B SEO strategies. This semi-fictional representation of your lead clusters or groups guides you when developing a content marketing campaign that matches the customer’s journey.
Based on our previous example, here are the two possible buyer personas of an urgent care clinic in Carlsbad targeting seniors for San Diego demand generation:
A. Snowbird Sally
- 68-80
- Female
- Widowed or married
- Lives part of the year in Carlsbad, CA (typically winter) and spends the other half in colder states
- Enjoys mild climates and avoids the winter cold due to health concerns
- Actively participates in senior community events or groups
- Values convenience and patient-centered care
- Needs consistent healthcare during her stay in Carlsbad
- Might require help with medication management or chronic condition monitoring
- Desires a seamless healthcare experience between her two homes
- Appreciates clinics with transparent records transfer processes
- Often seeks services such as check-ups, flu shots, and joint pain treatments
- Prioritizes clinics near her Carlsbad residence or community center
B. Retired Ralph
- 72-85
- Male
- Married, with grown children living out of state
- Retired, formerly a professional (e.g., engineer, teacher)
- Enjoys leisure activities, such as golfing, reading, and gardening
- Prefers establishments that treat him with patience and respect
- Actively seeks out senior discounts or healthcare programs
- Needs clinics equipped to treat age-related ailments such as arthritis or diabetes
- Wants urgent care facilities that can liaise with his primary care physician
- Concerned about longer waits in traditional hospital emergency rooms (ERs)
- Looks for clinics with dedicated senior care services
- Prioritizes establishments with patient testimonials or peer recommendations
- Often requires diagnostic services, physical therapy, or respiratory treatments
4. Craft and Align Your Content with the Customer’s Journey
Even if you seem to have perfected the segmentation process, your message can still get lost if it does not match the user’s intent. Intent informs why they are looking for your products and services in the first place.
To understand the buyer’s intent is to determine where they are in the sales funnel or the customer journey. Usually, demand generation applies to the top of the funnel, which covers awareness and interest. Sometimes it extends to the middle, which is consideration or evaluation and proposal for B2Bs.
Here is an overview of the sales funnel stages and the ideal content type for each based on our two buyer personas:
| Sales Funnel | Definition | Snowbird Sally | Retired Ralph |
|---|---|---|---|
| Awareness | At this stage, the potential patient recognizes their health needs and seeks initial information. | Blog posts or articles about traveling seniors’ health concerns | Infographics or videos on common health issues for seniors |
| Interest | Here, the potential patient expresses interest in specific urgent care services and starts engaging with content that educates them further. | Newsletters with health tips for snowbirds | Webinars on geriatric health |
| Consideration | The potential patient is evaluating different urgent care options and is looking for more detailed information before choosing. | Patient testimonials and virtual facility tours | Q&A sessions with clinic doctors and pamphlets on elderly care |
5. Analyze Your Data and Refine the Segments
Customers change. For instance, the latest California data showed that the population declined again. However, foreign immigration tripled. The demographics from 2023 look very different from 2020, and your customer base probably does as well.
The people who sign up for your newsletters or read your posts might not be your customers anymore or at all. The internet is global. You might be wasting precious resources on these prospects when you can focus on high-quality leads.
For these reasons, analysis should be integral in your customer segmentation process. Many apps or software, including Google Analytics, provide detailed information about your clusters even in real time.
Your focus should land more on metrics to track. Because demand generation usually deals with awareness and engagement, ideal benchmarks include the following:
- Website traffic and sources
- Content engagement, such as page views or average time on page
- New leads
- Sales funnel conversion rate
- Clickthrough rate (CTR)
- Cost per lead
- Bounce rate
- Database growth
- Comments/feedback
Use the analytics results to fine-tune every aspect of customer segmentation, from your criteria to your content strategy.
Summing Up
Customer segmentation enhances the benefits of demand generation. It improves your metrics, makes lead generation more efficient, and optimizes resource use.
However, you should do it right. The steps above show you the basics to help you get started. If you need a more customized, detailed plan, Digital Authority Partners (DAP) is here to help.
As an experienced San Diego demand generation agency, our team generates over 2,000 qualified leads monthly for our clients using data-oriented marketing strategies. Want to know more? Contact us today.
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