MKT 432 - Strategic Marketing Planning - Module 3

Marketing Tools to Find Your Target Market
Two segmentation methods that can help a marketer define a target market are demographic and psychographic segmentation. Demographics give marketers more information about their ideal customers including such as age, gender, location, socioeconomic background, income level, family situation, religion, ethnicity, occupation, and job. These marketing demographics should “utilize information that’s easily accessible” as it “allows you to narrow and customize your marketing strategy to target potential customers who fit into a specific demographic market” (Indeed Editorial Team, n.d). This enables specific targeting for these specific groups to narrow down your audience into more specific categories by using the “unique traits of these categories to better understand how people in these demographics respond to your marketing campaigns” (Indeed Editorial Team, n.d).

For example, targeting 20-year-olds single, first-year college students will not be the best group to target for selling new development houses. Why? Simply because of their age, income level, occupation and education level, and their current family situation are not looking for homes. These college students are focusing on finishing their degrees and are not ready to make a major purchase such as a home. The correct demographic segmentation would make more sense for married couples with children, with a certain income level, and looking to settle down as the best group to target for new homes. If you are doing any type of advertisements offline or online, you may want to increase the age range to 30 to 40-year-old married couples with children since it will relate more to them; thus having more success in conversions with your marketing goals. With psychographic segmentation, the factors include more than physical aspects; it consists of personality, lifestyle, social status, activities, interests, opinions, beliefs, values, and attitudes. It is “the research methodology used for studying consumers and dividing them into groups using psychological characteristics” (SurveyMonkey, n.d).

Some great tools to use are CRMs (Customer Relationship Management) which allow you to manage “all your company’s relationships and interactions with customers and potential customers” (Patel, 2023). Some great examples are SalesForce, HubSpot, Monday.com, Microsoft Dynamics 365, and more. Along with using CRMs, and combining them with good data analytics tools such as Google Analytics, Semrush, Clicky, Adobe Analytics, and more.

How Does This Help My Marketing Plan?
This information can be used in the development of a marketing plan because although marketers can market to everyone and anyone, this will not be the most strategic way to do so. Marketing your products or services, because they may not be for everyone. Finding your “niche” group using demographic segmentation makes your products or services more likely to be purchased because they resonate with it more. By using a mix of demographic and psychographic segmentations, marketers can gain more information about their customers and build buyer personas that can strengthen “brand positioning, product development, and marketing messaging” (SurveyMonkey, n.d). By researching and listening to what your customers are saying, as a company, you will get to learn more about what they want need, and what their pain points are. After you have collected the data, you can review your marketing plan and see what’s effective or not effective and also continue to do more tests. Constantly reviewing your marketing campaigns will allow your company room to grow by making smarter, data-driven decisions for continued growth.

References
Indeed Editorial Team. (n.d.). 7 demographic marketing examples . Indeed. https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/demographic-marketing-examples

Patel, N. (2023, September 7). The best CRM software you should consider using in 2023. Neil Patel. https://neilpatel.com/blog/best-crm-software/#Hub

What is psychographic segmentation? SurveyMonkey. (n.d.). https://www.surveymonkey.com/market-research/resources/what-is-psychographic-segmentation/

Market Segmentation

Marketing Objectives

Consumer Engagement: Victoria’s Secret