The Importance of Market Segmentation

Now more than ever, information comes at us quickly. I get hundreds of emails a day, multiple text messages, pop up ads on my computer, and even folks messaging via Facebook. You know the feeling, right? We are literally bombarded with information.

That’s the challenge we all face when we try marketing to our prospective clients. How do you get noticed in the noisy world of information? One way is to consider segmenting your list of clients.
Segmentation is simply looking at your prospective client and identifying their key interests based on their age, services used, type of dog or any other category you choose. The idea behind segmentation is that you can target a particular marketing message to the right audience.

For too long most pet businesses market everything to everyone. Ads include all your services: grooming, training, daycare, lodging, etc. Emails that highlight sales are sent to every client regardless of their potential interest or whether they have already use that particular service. The key to breaking through the noise is to make sure you are sending only the most important message to the people who might be most interested. This helps to target your message and also prevents folks from seeing messages that aren’t relevant to them.

Here are a few examples:

• Increase your grooming: You might segment your clients by services they use: boarding, daycare, grooming, etc. Some clients might be in multiple segments and that’s ok. But then, let’s say you want to increase your grooming clientele so you want to offer a special introductory price for a first time groom. Rather than sending that email to those who are already doing grooming at your facility, you would exclude that segment from your marketing campaign and just send the promotion material to those who have never done grooming with you.
• Start a puppy program: You might segment your clients based on the age of their dog: puppies up to 6 months, dogs 6 months to a year, adolescent dogs 1-3 years, dogs over 4, etc. Then, let’s say you would like to create a puppy program. You could send marketing material only to those who have dogs under 6 months of age. Someone with an adult dog doesn’t need to get your marketing information about a puppy program so you are targeting your marketing efforts to the clients most likely to take advantage of your program.
• Build your training clients: Using the same segmentation mentioned above for the puppy program, you could also market specific dog training classes to specific ages of dogs. For instance, you might marketing basic obedience classes to dogs 6 months to a year of age; classes dealing with teaching a dog to come to dogs 1-3 years of age; or nosework classes to senior dogs.
• Get more dogs in daycare: If you segment dogs by ages you could also market your daycare services to dogs up to 3 years of age who are not already attending your daycare program.

By using segmentation you can make your marketing dollar more powerful and ensure your marketing message doesn’t get lost in the noisy world of information!