Customer segmentation market research

Maintaining customer loyalty comes from developing strong relationships where people trust you to meet their expectations and needs. But everyone is different, and most organisations couldn’t possibly build a personal relationship with every individual they encounter. That’s where customer segmentation comes in…

Segmentation offers a pragmatic middle ground, whereby you group your customers by shared characteristics, focus your efforts on those you can serve, and tailor your product and messages to engage them. Good segmentation works for all parties – providers deploy their resources efficiently, and recipients get relevant and appealing products, services or communications.

But how should you segment your audiences? An ill-fitting segmentation is worse than none at all, choosing your approach is a vital first step…

Why is customer segmentation so valuable?

Customer segmentation can help organisations increase engagement, improve customer satisfaction and drive higher conversion rates. In its simplest terms, it can help businesses understand how the needs, wants and attitudes of their consumers differ across their customer base and, crucially, determine which segments are the most profitable, most loyal, or closest to your brand. This insight can then be used across a range of business areas to drive business performance and elevate customer engagement and experience.

Segmentation can be a key asset to improving marketing effectiveness, helping organisations tailor campaigns and messages to specific customer groups to maximise impact and cut through. It can also directly influence product development and service optimisation, identifying unmet needs within specific groups and highlighting how audiences could be better served with increased relevance of their proposition.

Segmentation can also further broader organisational objectives, helping dispersed teams work together better by providing a shared language and understanding of their audiences.

How we approach customer segmentation at DJS Research

Our researchers are sector-focused, recognising that no two markets are the same, and we tailor our customer segmentation research to the needs of your business. As we embark on any new segmentation project we apply a range of considerations to the brief within the specific sector context:

Exploratory qualitative research: This can be very useful to help shape a segmentation questionnaire, particularly if you’re hoping to reach new parts of the potential market.

Robust quantitative measurement: Good quantitative data provides a sound foundation.

Iterative statistical analysis: We have a raft of statistical techniques at our disposal, and we deploy them intelligently to tease out the true drivers of differences in the data and develop well-rounded and recognisable segments.

Confirmatory qualitative research: Can be valuable to bring the segments to life, test hypotheses and generate collateral for pen portraits, and other dissemination tools.

Our bespoke segmentation solutions are underpinned by a core set of principles which we believe deliver the best results for all our clients. We ensure our segmentations are:

• Measurable: So you can tell the relative size and value of each segment within your market.
• Reachable: So that we can tell you how to find those who fall into each segment.
• Manageable: So that you don’t have too many segments to plan for or too few to focus your efforts.
• Recognisable: So that you can see each segment as real, fully formed people within your market.
• Actionable: So that you can prioritise segments within your market and develop segmented strategies and tactics to grow.

What sets our approach apart?

Our experience working with a range of clients across different industry sectors has taught us that segmentation research can raise a lot of questions within an organisation. We take the time to understand our client’s unique perspective from the outset, answering all questions in detail and ensuring all stakeholder inputs are fully considered, to ensure we make the best recommendations to suit their specific needs.

Whether you’re unsure about commissioning primary research vs. building on existing data, what to segment by, how a segmentation could integrate with your existing systems and processes or simply how ‘bespoke’ a segmentation needs to be in order to be effective, no question is too big – or too small – for us to answer to get your segmentation off to the best start. 

To explore how we could segment and enhance your customer dataset, to help inform your business strategy and campaign and marketing messages, contact us today.