Segment your customers into different markets. Once you have your customers segmented (this can be extremely detailed or not – depends on what type of life cycles you put toward the segments) you can begin targeting them in a more focused manner or you can broaden your marketing efforts. Either way, you will understand more about your customers by the process of segmentation. Many of these techniques can be used in social media marketing as well. You can segment your followers on Twitter with the use of lists. You can segment your friends on Facebook through the use of lists through the customize tool in the privacy settings, not to mention all the different tools within Linked In, MySpace, etc. Understanding the importance of segments will allow you to better market! Keep reading to find out how.
Buying Behaviors
Past response is indicative of future response. The most predictive piece of marketing is the recency of purchase. Through recency, frequency and monetary value analysis segmentation, you may find that you are over communicating with the same people. This tool can help you to see what segments are being left out. (social media friends, this applies to you as well!)
Once you analyze where your key customer segments are verses your average and inactive customers are, you can develop a plan of attack to the right people who are usually in the inactive and average platforms. Key customers are repeat customers that you normally contact at least 12 times a year with targeted offers (if we’re talking social media, then key customers are repeat buyers who engage in conversation within your network or just friends/followers who engage with you at least once a month). If you do not segment – you are just doing general marketing…and what good is that really?
It's The Future Marketing 