Common approaches to market segmentation include classifying the target audience by industry, geography, company size, or persona. These market segmentation methods don’t set you apart from your competitors, though, because while it might take a little digging or research, almost anyone can figure out how to align their target marketing efforts with demographic, geographic, or behavioral segmentation. Having specific knowledge of your prospect’s “why” can give you a distinct competitive advantage when you’re prospecting.
Psychographic segmentation for a prospect’s “why”
Where the above three methods of market segmentation provide information on who buys your product or service, psychographics gets to the heart of why they buy your product.
Psychographics analyzes and categorizes target buyers according to psychological variables such as aspirations, fears, attitudes, and values – all key ingredients to glean the motivating and mitigating forces behind buying decisions.
In other words, B2B target marketing messages must appeal to the emotions, in addition to the traditional appeal focused on rationale and logic to “make the business case.”
It is precisely this emotional component on which psychographic segmentation is based.
Getting psychographic insight with surveys
You can count on a buyer to bring their personality, their perspectives, and their biases to the decision-making process. Gaining insights to your buyers’ attitudes, values, and fears will help you uncover what their motivators are and how that will affect their purchasing behaviors.
Through SimplyDIRECT’s account-based marketing (ABM) tactics, we enhance your target marketing efforts by deploying a timely and relevant survey specifically to the people you want to talk to.
We ask questions along the lines of
- How satisfied are you with…?
- What concerns you the most about…?
- What are your biggest challenges with …?
- What are the most important features…?
The goal of the survey is to give you a solid understanding of your prospects’ goals, needs, and interests. You’ll be able to use the results to create custom content as part of your content strategy, which can be used for ongoing lead nurturing to keep your prospects engaged.
A setup for success
With a smart market segmentation strategy you can position your solution correctly to the right buyers.
In summary, if you know your prospects and what shapes their behavior, you can determine your best approach. You’ll be able to get inside their mindset with an understanding of challenges, issues, influences, motivators, and goals. Prioritize their concerns when you engage and they will listen to what you have to say.
Learn more: see sample research reports.