The Quickest Lead Segmentation Guide For The Uninitiated

The Quickest Lead Segmentation Guide For The Uninitiated

One of the most important aspects of Inbound Marketing is Delivering the right message to the right audience at the right time throughout the buyer journey. Lead segmentation is a very effective inbound marketing strategy that enables marketers to deliver messages that address the unique needs of prospects at each stage of the buyer journey. The other important benefit of lead segmentation is that it helps marketers in prioritizing their efforts and time in engaging with the leads that have the maximum conversion potential.

Here is a comprehensive guide for you to implement Lead segmentation and maximize your conversion rate.

Lead segmentation is all about segregating your contacts or leads into smaller groups based on different characteristics, interests, or needs and developing your market strategies accordingly. The idea is that the prospects belonging to the same group are likely to exhibit similar buying behaviour and hence marketers can design more focused campaigns and share relevant content. 

Lead Segregation Implementation Approach

Understand Your Customer Well

Lead segmentation begins with an understanding of your buyer persona. Make sure that you are aware of the unique needs, challenges, and interests of your target audience so that you know what they are likely to search on the web and what kind of content will add value to them. For example, if you sell a Performance Management System, your target customers are likely to compare features of different PMS software and engage with content such as  PMS implementation guide, success stories from similar industry verticals, etc. 

Know Your Sales Funnel

The needs, expectations, and actions of your leads are going to change as they move along the buying process. The key thing is to understand what these actions say about your prospect’s position and what would help them to take the next step.

So it’s important to create segmented lists for each stage of your sales funnel and place contacts on them, based on their most recent actions (page visits, content downloads, email signups, purchases, etc.). The objective is to send them relevant messages to help them move to the next stage of the buying process. 

Create your Segmented Lists

There are numerous ways to segment your leads but you need to be smart enough to pick segments that matter to you. Creating ineffective segments is a sheer waste of time, effort, and resources. 

Broadly speaking, there are two main categories for lead segments, Characteristic and Behavioural.

Characteristic segments

Characteristic segments are based on key attributes of your target audiences and are derived from the buyer persona. Some of the examples of characteristic segments include:

• Geographic: Location, country, language, etc.

• Demographic: Age, gender, nationality, income, etc.

• Sociographic: Marital status, children, family members

• Corporate: Company size, industry, etc.

Behavioural segments

Behavioural segments are based on the actions that the target audience takes throughout their buyer journey. 

 Key behavioural segments may include:

• Regular blog readers

• Multiple visits to product/service pages

• Visits on the pricing page

• Content categories 

• Keywords

• Multiple purchases

Tools for effective lead segmentation:

There are several tools that can help with lead segmentation. Here are our top picks:

• A CRM or Marketing automation software is a great tool to create your segments on different factors.  For example, it helps you to distinguish between first-time visitors, repeat visitors, and the actions users take across multiple sessions.  You can create lists based on the URLs users visit and the number of times they visit each page. 
• Email Marketing Automation software can also help you to create behavioural segment lists e,g lists of the user who clicked the links inside the mails,  users who have opened your mail more than twice.
• Google Ads is a great tool for segmenting leads as you can target people at specific stages of the buying process, based on the keywords they type in. You can also refine these segments further by using Google Ads’ targeting options to target users based on their location, demographic (age, gender, etc.), device type, and various other factors. Remarketing in Google Ads allows you to target previous visitors with visual ads as they continue to browse the web. These are people who have shown an interest in your products or services but didn’t convert right away. 

However, it is only the experts, who can use these tools in the best possible manner and offer you maximum ROI for your business. 

Automate the Lead Segmentation, Progression, and Messaging

Manual implementation of lead segmentation is certainly an inefficient and unsustainable exercise in the long run. It's important to automate the process of moving leads from one list to another and sending relevant messages as and when their action changes along the buyer journey. An automated lead segmentation strategy helps you to create complex lead segments and target very specific actions. Here is a list of the best marketing automation software for 2020. 

Conclusion

The more personalized your digital marketing programs are, the better you will be able to engage with customers. Lead segmentation empowers marketers to engage with their prospects at each stage and nurture them along the sales funnel until they reach the finishing line. So, it is imperative that you think on your feet and get started with the best lead segmentation approach for the win!