Seven Steps to Marketing Excellence: Step 3 - Market Segmentation

David Byrd : Raven Call
David Byrd
David Byrd is the Founder and Chief Creative Officer for Raven Guru Marketing. Previously, he was the CMO and EVP of Sales for CloudRoute. Prior to CloudRoute, He was CMO at ANPI, CMO & EVP of Sales at Broadvox, VP of channels and Alliances for Telcordia and Director of eBusiness development with i2 Technologies.He has also held executive positions with Planet Hollywood Online, Hewlett-Packard, Tandem Computers, Sprint and Ericsson.
| Raven Guru Marketing http://www.ravenguru.com/

Seven Steps to Marketing Excellence: Step 3 - Market Segmentation

The Seven Steps to Marketing Excellence are:

  1. Strategy
  2. Product
  3. Market Segmentation
  4. Brand
  5. Communications
  6. Lead Generation
  7. Sales Qualified Leads

Step Three – Market Segmentation

It is very difficult to sit down with a company and discuss market segmentation because often the founders and CEO believe they fully understand how their products and services fit into the market. Although, they are not seeing the sales that they wanted to achieve or the penetration in the markets that they initially sought to enter. Therein lies the dichotomy. Why isn’t the product successful?

Typically, when product sales are below expectations, CEOs look at the performance of the sales organization, alter marketing plans or might even try to tweak the products. However, success will remain elusive until the products are positioned to address the correct market segment.

For example, a smartphone that requires manual configuration to function and offers a high degree of customization is likely a better fit for a technically astute individual. A smartphone that comes out of the box ready to use is likely a better fit for someone who wants to avoid gaining a technical understanding of its vast array of options and just wants it to function.

Understanding Market segmentation and applying its principles to your product is the third step towards Marketing Excellence. Clearly identifying the market target you want to pursue, its size, reasonable penetration expectation, accessibility to your promotional capabilities and how appropriate the market fits your business are crucial elements in deciding where and how you should sell a product. At the end of the day market segments should be:

  • Large enough to be economic
    •    Have similar attributes
    •    Reachable or targetable 
    •    Relevant to business needs
    •    Actionable

 

Raven Guru Marketing believes performing accurate market segmentation is the best way to develop unique marketing campaigns thus making them more relevant for each segment and a better match prospective customer needs.



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