Market segmentation and relevant messaging are keys to effective marketing. The best place to start defining and segmenting your market is to get real-world feedback from your sales team. They have their feet on the street and their ears tuned to the customer. SimplyDIRECT’s approach for effective marketing is simple and straightforward. Here are three steps to get you started.
- Ask sales where sales is having success
Salespeople can tell you the market segments that are hot: the ones that are responsive and worthy of digging into. Get specifics. What company last asked for a pitch?
If you can get real and recent information on the last 10 to 15 companies that were interested in your pitch or bought your product, you have solid data.
- Segment by industry and job title
It is quite easy to take the company names, and reverse-engineer them. That is, you can see what market segments they represent, and you can source a list of other look-alike companies.
Two of the key elements in marketing segmentation are industry slice and job titles. Once you’ve identified the right markets, you then have to define the job titles to target.
Who will “open the door” to you? Who will be your internal champion? What were the job titles of the team that influenced the buying? What features are they looking for?
Segmenting your market means defining the breadth of individuals who will be receptive to your marketing message, likely managers to vice presidents. Target all the influencers.
- Tailor your message
Ahh, this is where the magic happens. Its one thing to define what audience to target. But what do you tell them? What messages will resonate with this market? This potential buyer?” What does your product do to help organizations in this market solve?
Again, it might be best to interview your sales team to find out what happy customers in this segment found in your offering that uniquely solved their pain. Those answers will provide the foundation for effective messaging to other prospects in this market segment.
Marketing becomes effective when you connect on a personal level; by referencing your prospect’s name, their job, their industry, and their pain. The closer you can get to the individual, the greater chance you’ll have of using the right messaging to strike a nerve and get a response.
Learn more about our lead-generation surveys and how you can use them to pre-qualify candidates in your market segment.