Customer Segmentation - Three Ways To Skin The Cat
It’s not exactly rocket science…
The concept of customer segmentation really is a simple one - group your customers together according to a set of defining characteristics.
What the marketer wants to achieve from the segmentation exercise is to develop plans (or product features) that best appeal to the different segments.
Therefore, it makes good sense to first segmentize your customers before developing plans.
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Frank Kern - Evil Marketing Genius
I finally got around to watch one of Frank Kern’s Mass Control videos this morning.
For the uninitiated, Frank Kern was one of the heavy hitters in the Internet marketing field, having masterminded multi-million launches such as Stompernet, Pipeline Profits and Serializer. Frank was also the brain behind Neil Strauss‘ Annihilation Method which netted $1million within 15 minutes of its launch.
In this particular video, he outlined a covert persuasion method that plants the desire in your customers to buy your product using metaphors and storytelling.
Instead of blatant, in-your-face selling, the covert marketer tells a seemingly unrelated story which identifies the desired results or benefits, overcome objections, and then transfer the desired results from the metaphor to the product you want to market.
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Met Guy Kawasaki!
Went to the Netbash @WCIT event at Nikko Hotel in Kuala Lumpur on Monday - it was a real blast!
The highlight of the day was definitely meeting Guy Kawasaki - the ex Apple evangelist and currently a venture capitalist. A very natural speaker who connected well with the audience.
Also, got one of his really funky namecards - his name in silver font on a black background on the front, and his email and cell on the back.
Way cool!
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The Death of Brute Force Marketing
Some years back, when I was at a Fortune 100 company, I was guilty of what I would call “Brute Force Marketing”.
We all wrote marketing plans which all look but the same initiative after initiative. They all invariably have these components -
- Bombard the television networks with thirty-second advertisements.
- Sponsor some TV shows.
- Get some celebrity endorsements.
- Do some events.
- Distribute samples at the stores.
- Throw in some heavy discounts to ‘drive trial’, ad infinitum.
(If you are not familiar with this piece of jargon, ‘driving trial’ means getting your customers to buy your product for the first time - if the product is good enough, then there will be repeat buys, and thus ensuring the sustainability of your business)
I called it “Brute Force Marketing” because all we needed to do were to get these generic plans off-the-shelf, and and then put in lots of resources (cash and an insane amount of manhours) behind them.
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