 The age represents the generation of the buyer persona. Different generations use different communication channels, and generally prefer a particular tone of voice.
Mid-size cafe owner - This information limits all promotional strategies to entrepreneurs of their financial status. A small cafe owner would probably choose a cheaper option, while the owner of a franchised location will have to buy a specific machine.
Has excellent knowledge of coffee - As an experienced barista, the cafe owner will be looking for a very specific type of information online. When you define the level of industry expertise, you know how to adjust your marketing strategies and the content on your website.
Values quality more than quick profits - One of the above goals was to provide a coffee that tastes great. While there are many low-priced machines that produce average coffee, this particular customer is willing to spend a little more if it means that the production process is superior.
Likes to read industry news and participates in barista contests - This piece of information can further narrow down your marketing efforts. For example, knowing that your potential customer participates in barista contests, you could organize your own contest or sponsor the best baristas in a particular geographic area.
Now we know who "John" is and why he is important. The more detail you add to the description of your buyer persona, the easier it is to decide how your marketing strategy will look like.
As soon as you start to build a customer base, you will notice that not every "ideal" customer is the same. This is where segmentation becomes useful. By breaking down your list of (potential) customers into smaller sections, you will be able to send more targeted promotional strategies.
Inactive potential customers - This is the group of people who signed up to a newsletter but neither opens their emails or purchases products. They have lost interest in the brand, and are probably in the list due to prior contest participation or as a result of a lead magnet download. These customers will need to be addressed separately, using a reactivation campaign.
Active potential customers - These customers are interested in your emails but have not yet purchased your product. They either feel hesitant or explore different options in the market. The brand will attempt to convert them using an irresistible offer, like a large discount or a free gift with their purchase.
Customers - The actual customers - those who purchased a coffee machine - will need a different form of communication and marketing promotion. Since they already bought the coffee machine, they would probably benefit more from offers of related products, like cleaning tablets, push tampers, or coffee bean grinders.
Segmenting based on buying behavior is very common when it comes to companies that emphasize email marketing. If you are building a digital product, behavior-based segmentation will be very useful, especially if your product has a freemium model (or a free trial).
91% of consumers are more likely to shop with brands that provide offers that are relevant to them.
72% of consumers only engage with personalized messaging, no matter which communication channel is used.
If you are part of an early-stage startup, don't wait on this one. Gather the team and make sure everyone is on the same page when it comes to your ideal customer. Doing so will increase the chances of long-term success.
How do you know if you have a product/market fit?
Product/market fit happens over an extended period of time, when testing your MVP product with different segments of your target audience. The first version of your product will most likely not be the final one, and knowing where to improve will require feedback from users and extensive data collection. So, how do you get product/market fit? It’s simple. When the market is fully satisfied and accepting of your product. For further reading and learning how to go about this continuous testing process, make sure you read The Lean Startup, by Eric Ries.
What does market fit mean in the context of audience segmentation and profiling?
Product/market fit means that a certain segment (or targeting customer profile) accepts the latest version of your product and is fully satisfied with it. By understanding what is customer segmentation and profiling, you will be able to split your audience into different categories and create buyer personas, which will be used to further specify your product offering depending on the person you want to attract.
Why is product/market fit important when it comes to segmentation strategy & profiling?
Customer segmentation profiling helps a company better understand which part of the audience has the highest preference for a particular product. In many ways, finding a product/market fit happens before the segmentation process starts.
Defining your product’s potential in the market depends on industry-wide data and the profiling only comes afterwards, when more internal data is collected.
Without first exploring the potential of your product, you would not be able to segment your audience afterwards.
What are some additional customer profiling and segmentation tools?
CRM tools include Salesforce, AgileCRM, Hubspot, and Commence CRM, etc.
Email marketing tools include SendInBlue, GetResponse, AWeber, Omnisend, ConvertKit, etc.Earlier this year, Facebook acquired WhatsApp for $19 billion dollars. With 450+ million users per month and 70% of them active per day, Facebook is betting on the the app’s massive user base and continued growth.
Although WhatsApp is enormously popular, very few WordPress sharing plugins have prioritized adding the service to the list of supported sharing options.. The sharebar only appears to visitors when they are browsing your site on a mobile site, and you can remove the Facebook and Twitter buttons if you just want to include WhatsApp.
The plugin allows you to select specific post types where you want the sharebar to appear, i.e. frontpage, posts, pages, categories, archives, tags, and even specific custom post types. You can also change the position of the bar to appear on the bottom of the screen. All text for the sharing buttons is customizable in the plugin’s settings page:
A real-time preview of the sharebar appears in the settings page as you edit it, so you know what it’s going to look like on mobile devices. After testing the plugin, my only complaint is that the sharebar is sticky as you scroll down the page, taking up valuable mobile real estate. Having the option to remove that would be preferable, as stickiness might be a deal breaker for some users.
While WhatsApp is available for iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Windows Phone and Nokia, the sharing button only works with iPhones at the moment. This is because the iPhone app is the only one that works with the URL scheme.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg commented on the WhatsApp acquisition: “WhatsApp is on a path to connect 1 billion people. The services that reach that milestone are all incredibly valuable.” When Buzzfeed added a WhatsApp sharing button, they found that readers on iOS clicked it more often than the Twitter button. It might be worth finding out if your readers are using WhatsApp so you can prioritize it among your sharing options. You can get the Mobile ShareBar from WordPress.org.
13 Comments
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I didn’t even know it was possible to add a Whatsapp button to a website.
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It’s really good for mobile users. However, wouldn’t it better to add share button specific to mobile OS, so user can share content with any application available.
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Yes to Aakash’s comment that a Many Mobile Apps Share, just as we currently have for desktop, would be great. Now that we finally got the Responsive message, we need to go deeper into Mobile still.
Yes to Nairobi’s comment that a WhatsApp subscription would be great.
Yes to Sarah’s comment, I too like Telegram a lot better. I LOVE the “photo from the web” feature! The ability to search, for example, your own name and have a ready library of images is a nice way of accessing all that Cloud content.
Yes to Ryan’s comment that also having a desktop app, as Telegram does, is nice. (also Telegram runs on devices like iPod Touch & iPad, which WhatsApp doesn’t)
And yes, WhatsApp is huge. I just saw Barbara Wong’s new Hong Kong film “Girls”
One of the characters is asked “what would you do if you saw your best friend’s boyfriend cheating on her?”
Answer: “I’d WhatsApp it!”
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I also didn’t know this, sounds exciting, it would be great if they would have a subscription kinda service where your blog readers can receive posts in their whatsapp. Talk of the future!
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Hi Sarah
“It might be worth finding out if your readers are using WhatsApp…”
I’m not using it in fact this is the first time I’ve heard about it.
“WhatsApp is on a path to connect 1 billion people.”
The mind boggles!
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You must be living under a rock, lol, Whatsapp is crazy popular these days.
I really don’t like it because there’s no web app for it and I hate having to type on a crappy touch screen, but I’m stuck using it since so many others do.
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Well I’ll be darned. It turns out their entire API is open!
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I didn’t realize how big whatsapp had gotten. I don’t think I know a single person that is using it, but I guess I need to keep a lookout at it as trends change.
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Bizarre. It’s crazy popular. I gave in around a year ago as I got