Customer segmentation on social networks. Segmentation and identification of the target client on your own. Using Buyer Segments

Today, many companies at the initial stages of development pay increased attention to the problem of identifying their potential clients. If you want to sell a product or service to a person, it would not hurt you to understand what exactly he wants to receive.

Of course, ideally, you would thoroughly study each of your clients, but this will be very expensive. That is why the approach in which the company divides consumers into several groups is becoming increasingly popular. In this case, a typical representative of each group is called a person.

About persons

A person is understood as a conditional representative of a group of people united by a common goal. On average, companies allocate 3-7 people. When classifying consumers, an impressive amount of information is taken into account: the client’s name, his age, gender, marital status, information about his property, etc.

All this allows you to form a fairly clear portrait of a person who is interested in collaborating with you.

Why is this necessary?

Let's imagine a situation: you work in the field of e-commerce and want to create a functional and user-friendly website. By treating your customers as a monolith, you lose the opportunity to influence each of them individually.

By dividing your target audience into groups, you thereby become closer to consumers.

Identifying your core customer archetypes helps determine what direction your company should take. As a result, the consumer receives exactly what he was looking for.

So, the website or landing page has been created and is running successfully. But don’t rush to stop analyzing users. You've probably spent a lot of money developing personas of your typical customers. So why not use the accumulated information to improve the resource? You can analyze exactly how your customers use the resource.

The image of your typical client should not be taken as a constant. On the contrary, you must constantly complement this image with new details. This will allow you to better understand the problems of the target group.

What to focus on when classifying clients?

Segmentation of the customer base can only produce results if the correct criteria are used as the basis for dividing people into groups.

Let's give an example. A company specializing in the sale of software set out to characterize as accurately as possible the persona of a regular visitor to their website named Maskim. What is known about him?

“Every Monday at 10 a.m. Maxim receives an email with recommendations on how to use new functions. He uses his Android phone to view the email and reads one blog post before heading to his next meeting.”

But how can you use this information in the process of segmenting your customer base? It’s probably not worth dividing clients into groups based on the exact time they received letters of recommendation. However, a company should not lose sight of the difference between users who visit the site throughout the week and those who only do so on the weekends. Maxim is subscribed to newsletters, which is also an important characteristic of him.

The gender of the user in this case plays practically no role, and therefore should not be taken into account in the segmentation process (however, if we were talking about, for example, an online clothing store, the client’s gender would be one of the determining factors).

Is it important for the company to know that Maxim visits the site using his phone? Do users who access a resource via mobile devices behave differently than everyone else? To understand this, it is necessary to conduct an in-depth analysis of the activity of site visitors. Of course, this is not easy to do, but the result is worth it.

What is the optimal customer segment size?

It is believed that the most effective is to divide the company's audience into groups that include 7-10% of the total number of its clients. Of course, you are not obliged to strictly adhere to the designated boundaries, and you can choose the size of the segments yourself. Ultimately, it's up to you to decide what's best for your business.

At the initial stage of segmenting the customer base, it is worth taking into account only the most significant characteristics of consumers. In the future, you can increase the number of criteria taken into account, thereby reducing the size of the allocated groups. Here are some of the characteristics that allow a person to be classified into one group or another:

1. Demographic: age, gender
2. Geographical: country of residence, type of settlement
3. Device type and user browser

To properly characterize a client, you also need to answer the following questions:

1. Has he contacted your company before?
2. How did he know about you?
3. What information exactly is he interested in?

Segmentation in Action

Let's look at a specific example of how grouping users allows you to understand whether they are satisfied with the product offered to them.

There is no doubt that loyal customers bring more profit. Directly or indirectly. Currently or in the future. But who is he - a loyal customer? The one who buys large amounts of goods and services from us? Or the one who turns to us whenever a need arises? Or someone who shares their impressions, ideas, thoughts about our product, understands the work scheme and adheres to the company’s business processes

Svetlana Nezhintseva,

manager and owner, souvenir service “Semitsvet”

In this article you will read:

How and why to conduct customer segmentation

How to improve the efficiency of loyalty management

Customer segmentation allows you to evaluate customer loyalty by category and prepare an individual offer for each of them. In 2007, only 30% of client requests entering our company resulted in orders, and today - about 70%. The number of problem orders decreased from 7 to 2%. How did we achieve this? We have improved our work with clients, based on an analysis of the types of their loyalty 1 towards our company.

Surely all these qualities of clients indicate their loyalty to one degree or another. But which of them are most significant for us from the point of view of maximizing income and business development? To optimize customer loyalty management, let's answer this question.

I decided to determine what type of customer loyalty is most beneficial to our company. To do this, I had to visualize the images of our company's customers and segment them according to how they show their commitment to our product and service.

Typology of loyalty

I came up with a list of five types characterized by certain behavior towards our company. Behavior that we want to support and develop in our clients. This is very important for customer segmentation.

1. Financial loyalty is when a client buys from us, that is, makes a profit directly and right now.
2. Referral loyalty - the client recommends us to others, thereby indirectly increasing our profits in the future. In most cases, a new client will buy something from us.
3. Procedural loyalty - the client complies with our rules and business processes. By strictly following the company's rules, and sometimes by taking some actions on their own, the client saves our money. For example, by paying a bill on time, he saves working capital. Bringing the accounting closing documents and not forgetting the power of attorney saves our time, which could have been spent on obtaining these documents later. Picking up the goods from the warehouse yourself reduces our delivery costs. By reducing costs, we increase profits, which means that a client who shows procedural loyalty indirectly increases the company’s profits at the present time.
4. Contact loyalty is when a client contacts us for a variety of reasons. A contact client is a great success. If you're a good listener, you can improve your business by implementing the best ideas your outgoing customers have to offer. By participating in marketing events, customers are the first to know about all our new products and innovations and are often eager to take advantage of them. Thanks to this openness, we better understand our customers, guess their desires and anticipate their needs. This means we make better offers and, as a result, receive greater profits. Thus, customers who show contact loyalty directly bring us profit in the future.
5. Evaluative loyalty - the client evaluates us and gives feedback on our work.

It's nice to be praised. And no one likes dealing with complaints. However, complaints are the key to improvement! They allow you to see your weaknesses and improve. By giving us feedback, expressing dissatisfaction and grievances, customers indirectly increase our profits in the future. For the fact that the client did not leave silently, but told you openly what he was dissatisfied with, you need to thank him! This is a caring client. He cares how things are going for you.

Type evaluation

Imagine a client who exhibits 100% of the five types of qualities simultaneously. It would ensure the prosperity of the company for many years, wouldn't it?

But in reality we are faced with people in different conditions and economic situations. All our clients are loyal to us to one degree or another - some more, some less. You can verify this by recalling several customers and graphically depicting their loyalty profiles.

In many ways, the type of loyalty depends on the personal characteristics of the client. If a person is good at recommending a company, I am interested in encouraging that type of loyalty in him. If a client gives constructive feedback, I encourage him to do so more often and on different occasions. When carrying out activities to attract new clients, I first motivate them to show contact, evaluative and/or referral loyalty, and after that it is easier for them to show financial and procedural loyalty.

The most important loyalty

Which type of loyalty is most important to you? Depends on the business, as well as the tactical goals and objectives of the company. The coordinate system will help you navigate: on the X axis - the time during which customer loyalty will increase your profits (right now or in the future), and on the Y axis - the strength of the influence of the type of loyalty on increasing profits (directly or indirectly). And in this coordinate system I placed all the discovered types of loyalty.

If you are at the startup stage, then you are probably most important to ensuring regular orders from paying customers and financially loyal customers will be the most desirable for you. If you are at the stage of optimizing business processes, then the value of customer feedback increases. What type of loyalty to develop and maintain in your specific situation is up to you to decide.

Working with a large database

What if there are not 10 clients, but 100, 1000, 10,000? It’s impossible to remember them all! How then to evaluate loyalty? In 2009, our customer base numbered 500 people. By that time, I had already developed and implemented methods that allowed me to segment clients, analyze the effectiveness of managers, etc. It turned out that this was quite enough to assess customer loyalty (Table 1).

Table 1. Loyalty rating

Help in evaluating marketing activities

To increase customer loyalty, and this is a necessary component of any company, each company takes certain actions, carries out events in which considerable funds and significant resources, time and personnel, are invested. But the larger the client base, the larger the budget you have to work with and the more difficult it is to assess the effectiveness of investments.

• Attracting customers to the store: a unique loyalty program

Marketers often, due to their ignorance or inability, tend to erode the budget for working with an unfocused audience. But if you have chosen what type of loyalty you intend to develop in clients, it will be much easier to focus your marketing budget specifically on this task. And then marketing activities will be targeted and targeted, and investments will be more differentiated (Table 2).

For example, if ABC analysis showed a decrease in the number of customers with the “financial loyalty” type who make purchases for a large amount (a subtype of financial loyalty), part of the marketing budget should be directed to measures to increase the average check. An example in our case is the “Around 13!” campaign.

Table 2. Marketing activities that increase different types of loyalty

The modern client is picky, spoiled and increasingly expresses dissatisfaction with the fact that he is approached without a special offer and his preferences and behavioral characteristics are not taken into account. You can get around this “sharp corner” and increase loyalty using a proven method - customer segmentation.

Segmentation is a useful behavioral analytics tool. It can be used both at the stage of “understanding customers” ( customer insight ), and at the stage of developing the mechanics of working with clients.Segmentation can be successfully combined with other data analytics tools, e.g. ranking clients. Based on segmentation, economic calculations are formed, the response is determined and are being built return on investment (ROI) models.

Rule #1. Applied segmentation

Segmentation must be applied and have a specific task for which customers must be divided into groups.

Examples of tasks that segmentation helps solve: developing a strategy for working with client assets, optimizing the marketing budget for campaigns, developing an approach to individually influencing clients (maximizing the use of client behavior and their preferences).
We talked about the experience of such segmentation at the Loyalty Forum 2014 - a comprehensive project for one of the largest pharmacy chains in Ukraine.

Rule #2. "Correct" segments

As a result of segmentation, the “correct” segments must be identified.

The “right” segment of clients/Loyalty Program participants is a group of clients who have similar characteristics that differ on the characteristics of other customers (segments).

• Size. The segment must be large enough, either in purchasing potential or in numbers, for the company to interact with it profitably.
• Measurability. Segment customers must be measurable in their behavior.
• Availability or reachability. Segments must be reachable through communication and distribution channels.

There are various options for customer segmentation.As a result of applying each method, we obtain different results.
The previously very popular segmentation based on socio-demographic characteristics is increasingly being replaced by segmentation based on customer behavioral data (visits, purchases, calls).

Each option provides certain customer data, a segmentation process, and a methodology.

The choice of method should be dictated includingqualifications of the performer, existing software. You should not entrust complex segmentation to employees without the appropriate qualifications and work experience. For example, to carry out clustering (a technical method of segmentation) you need special software from the Data Mining class. In the absence of sufficiently qualified employees and special software, it is better to outsource the work of customer segmentation.

Rule #5. Qualitative data corresponding to the selected segmentation option

The data that forms the basis for segmentation must be current, consistent, complete,sufficient and properly prepared to carry out segmentation and obtain applied results.

Different segmentation options require different input data.

One of the axioms of analytics says"garbage in - garbage out", The literal translation is “garbage in, garbage out.”In order to obtain applied and "correct" segments, the data at the segmentation input must comply with the rules described above.

This is perhaps one of the most important conditions for the stability of a company, so the success of any business depends on how competently the company builds relationships with clients. It is very important to know your customers - who they are, how they are developing, what their needs and priorities are. The better a company knows its clients, the more effective (and profitable!) it will be to work with each of them.

However, when a company has many clients, it is almost impossible to provide an individual approach to each of them. But, as a rule, it is possible to identify groups of clients with similar needs, business processes, product portfolio, etc. And develop individual approaches for each of these groups in product pricing policy, advertising and other aspects of interaction.

Companies often have difficulty segmenting customers because they need to take into account many attributes and factors at once. In addition, clients’ businesses may expand over time, change areas of activity, or move; some employees are replaced by others. That is why the segmentation process is dynamic: it is necessary to make changes regularly and in a timely manner, as well as add new information about clients, on the basis of which segmentation is based.

The use of modern CRM solutions makes the segmentation process simpler and more technologically advanced, and the presence in the CRM system of modules for conducting various types of analysis opens up wide opportunities for marketers and heads of sales departments.

But first, let’s look at the main problems that are solved using customer segmentation.

1. Optimization of assortment and pricing policy

2. Promotion

The impact of any advertising campaign is always designed for a specific group of consumers (clients); There is no advertising that targets absolutely everyone. A differentiated promotion policy assumes that different promotion channels, different messages, etc. are used to influence different segments. In order for promotion to be effective, the company must know the portrait of “its” segments, their priorities and values. The capabilities of CRM systems provide for customer segmentation, including for tasks related to promotion.

Customer segmentation using Monitor CRM

The Monitor CRM system has ample opportunities for customer segmentation. Let's look at the main modules and functions of Monitor CRM that can be involved in the segmentation process.

Directory "Counterparty Card"

In order to assign a client to a particular segment, it is necessary to collect as much necessary information about him as possible. Monitor CRM creates a kind of “dossier” on the client, information from which can subsequently be used for various purposes (in our case, for the purposes of effective segmentation).

For segmentation and analysis, any information from the card can be used: these can be not only the parameters of the organization itself, but also characteristics of its employees, the work of this organization with other contractors, promotion activity, etc. For example:

The work with the client can be influenced by the gender and age characteristics of the management. Therefore, we can divide into different segments those where young managers with an MBA are at the helm and those where 50-year-old managers who started their careers under socialism are in charge.

Organizations that actively work only with you, and those that work with multiple suppliers.

Clients who are actively promoting themselves in the market (and you!), and those who are quite passive and are waiting for similar steps from your company.

There are many more segmentation parameters that can be given, and all of them can be stored in the “Counterparty Card” of Monitor CRM.

In addition to direct information about the client, which is contained in the “dossier,” data accumulated in the process of work can be used for segmentation. For example, sales data that is loaded into Monitor CRM from the accounting system, the number and nature of contacts and requests, interactions with competitors, etc.

Monitor CRM has various tools for defining segments. Let's look at the main ones.

Samples:

Any information, even not very formalized, can be used to segment customers. You can select clients both on the basis of the “Counterparty Card” data and on the basis of your existing experience working with him.

For example, you can create the “Unreliable” segment by selecting those who applied for a certain product, but then did not buy it.

Sampling can be used to effectively promote new products. To do this, key indicators are identified on which the “saleability” of the product most depends - geography of retail outlets, retail space, availability of specific equipment, previous volume of purchases for a given group, etc. Based on these requirements, a sample is set, and as a result, a list of customers is formed, with which the promotion of a new product will be most successful.

You can find a “Risk Group” if you ask, for example, to search for clients who once bought for significant amounts, but your managers have not had contact with them for a long time.

Much more is possible!

In fact, Monitor CRM has no restrictions on client selection criteria. Moreover, any selection can be specified without programming or knowledge of a query language.

The resulting list of clients can be placed in a separate group for further work.

If any characteristic is found in more than half of the group, it can be classified as the main characteristics of the segment. For example, if we analyzed the same “Risk Group” and saw that the majority of enterprises are located in certain areas, then perhaps this is due either to the geography of their location, or the managers responsible for this region are not working well.

Groups:

The division of counterparties into groups is provided for in almost all accounting systems (1C, BEST, etc.); Monitor CRM is different in that clients can have several classifications. The same company may be included in different groups according to different classifications.

Example: quite often there is such a scheme for dividing client companies: retail stores - small wholesale - wholesale. This classification of clients is of interest, first of all, to sellers - sales managers, client managers, etc.

For logistics specialists, another classification is important - the distance and/or transport by which the goods need to be transported to the client. Accordingly, companies will be classified roughly as near, mid-distance and remote.

For financiers, it is important, first of all, how the client pays for goods/services: in cash or by bank transfer, whether he uses installments, factoring, etc.

Segments obtained using the "Selections" module can also be added as groups to any of these sets.

You can also create so-called “dynamic groups”. In this case, you simply specify in the “Selections” module any characteristics and parameters of the client that should classify it as a specific segment. For example, clients who have stores in specific areas of the city with an area of ​​more than N square meters and certain equipment... As soon as the client meets these parameters, he will immediately be in the desired group. This way you can do automatic segmentation!

Signs:

In addition to dividing into groups, each client can be assigned various characteristics. Here, too, the classification can be any, for example, by location (type of area, proximity to certain objects, etc.), by the area of ​​stores (warehouses), by store opening hours, etc. It is important that the classification by characteristics is not redundant - only those characteristics that actually affect the work with clients are specified.

For example, a wholesale supplier of furniture for its clients can set the attribute “store area”, “opening hours” and “main customer contingent”. If the furniture is sold as a set, then the type and number of “brand sections”.

If the classification when divided into groups is always exhaustive (retail - wholesale - small wholesale), then the value of the characteristic is always arbitrary. Groups are hierarchical (a certain sequence and nesting of groups is specified), and characteristics can be used in parallel. For example, it is better to specify the client’s geography through groups. The client is always located in some district - region - city - region... And it is better to indicate the parameters of his office or sales area in the signs. The same company can fall into different classifications based on office space and the quality of repairs and design.

Most often, the assignment of characteristics is carried out by the manager who works with this client. Information for the “counterparty card” can be collected using various methods - both during personal communication between the client manager and company representatives, and through formalized questioning (for example, during any mass promotions for clients). In the latter case, the information may be collected by the marketing department.

Reports:

The availability of the necessary information about counterparties allows us to further carry out various types of analysis on clients, their product groups, etc. For example, you can analyze sales by various groups and characteristics. To carry out analysis in the Monitor CRM system, use the “Reports” module.

"Reports" can be used both to analyze the work of segments formed and distributed into groups, and to identify new segments.

For example, if segments have already been identified, then their purchasing practices can be assessed both overall and for specific products. The graph below clearly shows which segment was most actively purchasing a specific product:

To build such a report, you need to select the customer groups and product (or product group) of interest. This is done with a few clicks of the mouse. The result is a graph that shows how a selected product sold to different segments over the course of a year. Studying the above report, we can conclude that the largest turnover for this product is characterized by clients of the “Stores” group; Moreover, store turnover tends to increase. Other customer segments make only one-time purchases. Thus, a change in policy regarding this product may significantly affect work with the “Stores” segment, but is unlikely to significantly affect work with other segments.

Using the "Reports" module in the Monitor CRM system, you can analyze sales in almost any context: you can track sales dynamics, look at the ratio of consumers of a particular product group on a pie chart, analyze sales by characteristics, track dynamics by city districts and etc.

Or conduct a more in-depth analysis (see previous example). For example, look at how sales are distributed within the leading segment, among stores...

And how are these stores distributed, for example, across city districts...

The latest schedule will help us optimize logistics and ensure delivery of the right goods.

In Monitor CRM you can also determine which product is most in demand by a given segment. Using the "Leaders" function in the "Reports" module, you can obtain the product portfolio of the selected segment. For example, let’s see which products are preferred by customers from the “Stores” segment:

To obtain the structure of the “product portfolio” of the selected segment, we indicate that we need to find products that provide at least 80% of the turnover for this segment.

The resulting diagram shows not only what kind of goods these are, but also the dynamics of changes in the “product portfolio”. When studying the graph, you will notice that the product “Assorted Candles” (green) is gradually replacing “Brick Candles” (purple) for this segment. This may indicate a tendency for stores to “slide” towards cheaper assortment. Accordingly, when working with the “Stores” segment, it is necessary to take this fact into account.

In some cases, the same tool can be used for customer segmentation itself. For example, if we want to make changes to work with a certain product group, we need to know who the main target segment for these products is and who these changes will affect. To do this, we select this group, for example, the same “Candles” group, and find the best buyers for it.

The diagram immediately shows that any changes in the “Candles” product group will primarily affect customers “Store 1”, “Store 5” and “Store 2”. Further actions will depend on what we are going to do with this group. For example, if you plan to expand your product range, you can immediately notify the most interested customers about this by sending them emails or paper letters. This can be done immediately from the Monitor CRM program. If, on the contrary, we want to exclude these items from the assortment (for example, due to changes in delivery conditions), then it is worth conducting the analysis described above and looking at what share these items occupied in the turnover with these clients. Maybe if we remove this product group from our assortment, some of our clients will no longer work with us at all!

Interaction with different segments can be influenced not only by assortment policy, but also by promotion activities. It is known that advertising is one of the ways not only to attract new customers, but also to increase the loyalty of existing ones! Any client is pleased to know that he is working with a well-known company. But any advertising does not influence different segments of buyers equally. Therefore, to ensure customer loyalty, you need to know which segments a particular advertisement has the greatest impact on. For example, let’s compare the advertising budget for one of the areas with the sales dynamics for the main segments.

Customer segmentation is the division of customers into groups, each of which has one or more distinctive characteristics. This grouping method allows you to create a sales strategy for each customer segment and increase the efficiency of the business as a whole.

In the case of b2b (business to business), segmentation of the customer base can take place according to the following criteria:

• Industry
• Amount of workers
• Products that have already been purchased from the company
• Location

In the case of b2c (business to consumer), the audience is often divided by factors:

• Age
• Family status
• Place of residence
• Life goals

Why is customer segmentation needed?

Segmentation into groups allows marketers to adapt their strategy to each of them. This applies to the direct development of goods and their presentation to the buyer, as well as interaction with the latter. Segmentation can especially help a business in the following cases:

• Creating and designing a special type of interaction that is suitable for one audience group, but not suitable for others;
• The ability to choose the ideal way to communicate with a segment of clients through email marketing, radio or social networks;
• Determine ways to present products or services for each segment separately;
• Improve relationships with customers;
• Test pricing;
• Focus on those customers who bring in the largest portion of the company's revenue;
• Improve customer service;
• Modernize cross-selling and upselling.

How to segment customers

Customer segmentation requires complete information about them. Some data can be obtained from the order completion pages, for example, a person’s place of work or place of residence. Some of them may not be available, since the user often decides what to indicate in additional information about himself.

An Internet marketer, working with email newsletters, can conduct tests by dividing the audience into logical parts. As a result, it is possible to receive several extremely successful sales mailings and, based on this information, begin to further segment customers and draw up an individual offer for each group.

Basic methods of obtaining information:

• Communicating with customers directly or via telephone calls;
• Questionnaires;
• Analytics of ready-made information on user segmentation;
• Focus group.

Using Buyer Segments

Segmenting clients allows you to work individually with each group and get more profit from it. For example, if you have a guitar store, then it makes sense to create separate offers for students and teenagers and separate ones for adults. Next, if you have the necessary information, divide them into interest groups. This way, you can offer inexpensive guitars for young people with little income, and expensive products for adults with relevant interests.

This practice of customer segmentation is feasible in any type of business, in any industry, in any place of work: both offline and on the Internet. You just need to start with a high-quality collection of all possible information about customers and pay special attention to the marketing strategy. Also, don’t forget about testing: it is the main key to success.