Target Marketing and Market Segmentation
Target Marketing involves segmenting a market and focusing your marketing efforts on a few segments that most closely match your product or services. This can help you attract new customers and increase sales. Target marketing The beauty and power of targeted marketing is the ability to target specific consumers for promotion, pricing, and distribution. This makes it easier and more cost-effective, as well as a focal point for all your marketing activities.
Let’s say, for example, that a caterer offers services at the client’s house. Instead of advertising through a newspaper insert, the caterer would identify the target market and then send it out. The caterer could target the desired market by sending flyers to a specific address, or with a direct mail campaign.
Social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter have advanced options that allow businesses to target specific market segments. For example, a bed-and-breakfast could target married Facebook users with an advertisement for a weekend getaway package. LinkedIn is more business-oriented. You can target businesses using many criteria, such as the number of employees and industry.
There are many ways to approach market segmentation, but the three most popular types of segmentation are: demographic segmentation (geographic segmentation), psychographic segmentation (psychographic segmentation), and geographic segmentation (geographic segmentation).
Demographic Segmentation
Demographic groups are based on statistical data such as:
- Gender
- Age
- Income level
- Marital status
- Education
- Race
- Religion
For targeting target markets, the most important criteria are often demographic segmentation. This means that many businesses need to have a good understanding of demographic information. For example, a liquor vendor might choose to target its marketing efforts using Gallup poll results. This indicates that people younger than 54 prefer beer, particularly in the 18-34 age range.
Segmentation Geographic
Geographic segmentation is the process of segmenting a market based on its location. You could use, depending on your business’s scope, home addresses as an example.
- Neighborhood
- Postal code or ZIP code
- Area code
- City
- Province or state
- Region
- If your business is internationally based, country
Geographic segmentation is based on the idea that certain groups of people in a specific area might have different product or service requirements. A lawn care company might want to target a specific town or subdivision with a high number of elderly residents.
Psychographic Segmentation
The psychographic segmentation of the market is based on socioeconomic status or lifestyle preferences. The socioeconomic scale includes the well-educated and wealthy at the top and the less educated and skilled at the bottom. The UK-based National Readership Survey divides the social class into six categories: 2
| Social Grade | Social Status | Occupation |
| A | Upper class | Management, administrative, and/or professional positions. |
| B | Middle class | Professional, managerial or administrative intermediate |
| C1 | Lower middle class | Supervisory, clerical or junior managerial, administrative, professional |
| C2 | Skilled workers | Skilled manual labor |
| D | Class for the working class | Semi-skilled and unskilled manual labor |
| E | Subsistence class | Temporary, unemployed, or casual |
The lifestyle-preferences classification involves values, beliefs, interests, and the like. People who prefer an urban lifestyle to one in the suburbs, pet owners, and people who care deeply about environmental issues are some examples.
Psychographic segmentation works on the assumption that people’s choices when they purchase goods and services reflect their lifestyle or socioeconomic status.
Target Marketing Case Study: McDonald’s
QSR magazine’s 2019 QRS50 reveals that McDonald’s has captured over 18.5% of the fast-food market share in the U.S. McDonald’s has charged 18.5% of the U.S. fast-food market share with aggressive pricing and targeted advertising.
However, millennials have overtaken baby boomers to become the largest U.S. generation. McDonald’s sales have fallen as they advertise healthier menu options and premium coffee products like espressos.
