Instead of segmentation, try inclusion – it will get you more sales

For years the marketing industry has been busy segmenting. For a couple of decades it has been common best practice to segment customers into types of people to target everyone else who falls into the same segmentation.

These are often expensive exercises and can take months to complete. They may be of huge use to the brand, although all too frequently they are conducted in isolation of media and therefore channel intelligence has to be merged on separately after the first-party analysis, and digital behaviour cues are often now better signals of intent to purchase.

The naming of the segments seems to be crucial too and often involves alliteration. There might be a “Savvy Sally”, an “Apathetic Annie” or a “Careless Katie”.

Segmentation like this has been challenged. First, the Ehrenberg-Bass institute advice is not to segment your audience. So from “Hungry Henry”s and “Thirsty Theo”s some brands have instead moved to target for example “Anyone with a mouth”.

The Ehrenberg-Bass Institute’s Professor Rachel Kennedy and Dr Rachel Beal state that targeting should prioritise the buyers a brand hasn’t reached before.

Contrary to the view that marketers should target likely buyers by segment, the EB Institute has found that brand share bears very little relationship to the segments that brands may try to appeal to. Instead, Beal said: “We really see it as a size game.”

Read the full article in Campaign UK.