marketing strategyLead segmentation is imperative for marketing teams to increase the number of personalized buyer’s journeys. Gone are the days of putting out ads in the paper or commercials on TV and hoping for the best. Today, leads and opportunities want to connect to the product they wish to buy. Marketers have some strategies to do so. User-generated content, for example, is a great, cost-effective way to reach out to leads. However, that’s a little further along in the pipeline.

 

We’re going to be focusing more on determining who gets targeted with what. To do so, marketers segment leads into distinct categories based on key demographics, purchase history, how they contacted the business, and more. This leads to a more positive buyer’s journey that often translates to more conversions. Here are five ways to segment leads to optimize your marketing strategy.

1. Demographics

Demographics are a great way to break down leads into more personalized sections for marketers to target more effectively. Let’s take a closer look at a few strong ones to keep in mind.

Age

Age is probably the most important demographic for marketing teams to consider when segmenting leads and opportunities — especially today where millennials are the dominant buyer’s market and generation Z is making their presence known too.

 

Despite that, there are still baby boomers and generation X’ers who are still alive and well and like to buy things occasionally. Each generation has different priorities that all need to be considered. Younger generations like tech and personalized experiences. Older generations want stability and practicality.

Income

Breaking up leads by income is another smart way for marketers to optimize their marketing strategy. Income ultimately determines what people can and cannot afford. If you’re offering a product to people who don’t make a lot of money, and that product isn’t going to change their lives forever, the odds of them going out of their way to buy your product aren’t very high.

Location

This means targeting leads based on where they live is also essential. Neighborhoods, towns, cities, and states all have unique characteristics that marketers can use to create more targeted ads. If the majority of your customers live in a city, then marketers should include city-specific content that’s relatable. If your customers live in low-income areas, you might want to reconsider shooting commercials and ads in rich neighborhoods.

2. Purchase History

Have these leads bought anything from your business before? It should be very easy for marketers to find out. If so, a lot of the hard work is done; marketing teams can develop strategies for targeting previous customers who already know what it’s like to go through each stage of the pipeline. It’s especially important because customers want businesses to remember them. It shows that they’re not just another customer, but an actual human being.

 

Being remembered isn’t just beneficial for the customer. Your business doesn’t have to spend as much time and money trying to win a customer over who’s already been won. Separating leads based on purchase history is also a great way to cross- and up-sell other related products. There’s no guessing involved, either. All a marketer has to do is look at the purchase history to determine what they bought, how much it was, and what products might be of interest.

3. How They Contacted/Were Contacted

Marketers have all kinds of channels to contact leads. Those channels aren’t all created equal and require different kinds of attention. If a lead responded to an ad on YouTube or Instagram, it can be assumed they respond to visual ads and those should be emphasized. If another lead responded to a tweet, they might appreciate shorter, straight-to-the-point ads. If they responded to a Facebook ad, they might be more open to buying products recommended by their friends.

 

Paying attention to every channel (especially if you implement an omnichannel marketing strategy) is absolutely essential and helps marketers break down leads into much more specific segments. There can be segments for emails, social media, phone, and in-person. Those can even be broken down by agent, a certain email template, and social media platform.

4. Place in the Pipeline

Leads have to be nurtured throughout the pipeline to ensure they don’t feel like they’re being ignored. This can occur when customers who’ve already made a purchase, who are about to make a purchase, or who never made a purchase, are treated as if the opposite is true. Marketers can target and segment leads based on where they are in the pipeline to ensure every step of the way advances them along towards a sale.

 

Nurturing requires agents to know their customers at an intimate level. However, agents work with tons of leads and it’s hard to keep track of who’s who. By segmenting leads based on how far along they are, marketers can see when it’s time to follow up and when to leave leads alone. No one wants to be pressured into a sale and no one wants to be forgotten either.

5. Psychographic Segmentation

This is simply segmenting leads based on, for example, what frustrates them or what their goals are. Keep these ideas in mind while looking at key demographics helps marketers build better buyer’s profiles and offer more targeted ads. People tend to have the same goals as each other, but it’s not smart to assume everyone is going to use your product in the same exact way.

 

Learning what a lead’s goals are can lead to a more personalized buyer’s journey. Understanding what frustrates them can tell marketers exactly what kind of products they should be offering. It’s not enough to look at demographics and metrics to understand what’s going on in a lead’s head. You have to be proactive. Make every meeting and interaction count to convince the lead the product will, in fact, help them.

The Final Word

These five ways are only the beginning when it comes to lead segmentation, a necessary step for marketers interested in offering personalized experiences for every lead and opportunity. The more personalized an interaction and ad is, the more likely a customer will relate to the product or service your business offers. This often leads to higher conversion rates because customers today are looking for businesses that offer them products that already fit in with their everyday lives.

 

Customers want to see how products are used and how others are using them. In order to accurately showcase that, businesses need to break up leads based on demographics, purchase history, how they were contacted, where they are in the pipeline, and psychographics. The stronger the effort to segment leads, the more focused your marketing campaigns will be.

 

About the author:

Reuben Yonatan is the founder @ GetVoIP — an industry leading business comparison guide that helps companies understand and choose a VoIP system for their specific needs. Follow on Twitter @ReubenYonatan