BY LAUREN DREXLER – ENGAGEMENT MANAGER
I SHOP, THEREFORE I AM
I am a college-educated, single, employed, Caucasian, Millennial, Dallas-based female. There you have it – the key information you need to know about me to create a sure-to-succeed, targeted marketing campaign to win my loyal business, right?
Not so fast. As my colleague Jim Sawyer explained in a previous post, segmenting your customer base provides a multitude of values for a business, and by now has become a best practice across a wide variety of industries. There are dozens of ways segmentation can be done: demographics, RFM (recency, frequency, monetary), attitudes, jobs-to-be-done, and many, many more.
A wise man one said “show me how you spend your time and money and I will be able to tell you a lot about yourself.” The premise is that we humans may say one thing, but do another (shocking, I know); therefore, it’s really our behaviors, not our attitudes or demographics, that provide the most rich and actionable information about us.
YOU KNOW WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT ASSUMPTIONS, RIGHT?
So, back to me. While the facts at the outset of the post are true, they are often used by businesses to derive assumptions about my behavior. As a Millennial, I must be tech-savvy. As a female, I must be interested in fashion, cooking, and fitness.
When I consider others in my demographic segment overall, can I assume some of those behaviors hold true? Sure. But when I think about my actual real-life friends that fall into the exact same demographic segment as I do, these assumptions start to fall apart. My friend Becky abhors all social media, and my friend Amy couldn’t care less about whether or not a product is eco-friendly. On the flipside, other friends and family members in completely different demographic segments exhibit behaviors not commonly associated with those segments. My Nana, a member of The Greatest Generation, is pretty active on Facebook.
Have you Googled “how to market to Millennials” lately? I have, and each time I am met with a dizzying array of platitudes. Some examples from the first page of the over 16 million results: “marketing through mobile devices is important,” “be relevant and engaging,” “collaboration is key.” While this may be true for some Millennials, is it true for all? And do the same recommendations not hold up for non-Millennials? I asked my Nana if she wanted marketing that was “relevant and engaging,” a noted critical component of marketing to Millennials. Unsurprisingly, her answer was “who doesn’t?”
In addition to falsely deriving assumptions about our behavior, another flaw of demographic segmentation is that demographics change. I may get married and move to Iowa, but is my propensity to take advantage of a Neiman Marcus discount code going to change? Probably not.
DEMOGRAPHICS DO MATTER
This is not to say demographic information is not valuable and actionable. Used in the right way, it absolutely is. We are data omnivores, and like to think of different types of data as lenses through which you can view your customers to gain additional insight into your customer base.
One example of where demographic information is beneficial is in the development of creative materials and strategies. If you know your best customers are predominantly 50 years and older, you would not likely want to feature teenagers in your ads. Another example includes income levels; understanding the typical income level of your customers (especially your best customers) can influence price point decisions.
In my next post I will dig into another type of segmentation, jobs-to-be-done, and lay out the pros and cons of that methodology. Until then, I’m still waiting on that coupon, Neiman Marcus.
Millennial Shmillennial
BY LAUREN DREXLER – ENGAGEMENT MANAGER
I SHOP, THEREFORE I AM
I am a college-educated, single, employed, Caucasian, Millennial, Dallas-based female. There you have it – the key information you need to know about me to create a sure-to-succeed, targeted marketing campaign to win my loyal business, right?
Not so fast. As my colleague Jim Sawyer explained in a previous post, segmenting your customer base provides a multitude of values for a business, and by now has become a best practice across a wide variety of industries. There are dozens of ways segmentation can be done: demographics, RFM (recency, frequency, monetary), attitudes, jobs-to-be-done, and many, many more.
A wise man one said “show me how you spend your time and money and I will be able to tell you a lot about yourself.” The premise is that we humans may say one thing, but do another (shocking, I know); therefore, it’s really our behaviors, not our attitudes or demographics, that provide the most rich and actionable information about us.
YOU KNOW WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT ASSUMPTIONS, RIGHT?
So, back to me. While the facts at the outset of the post are true, they are often used by businesses to derive assumptions about my behavior. As a Millennial, I must be tech-savvy. As a female, I must be interested in fashion, cooking, and fitness.
When I consider others in my demographic segment overall, can I assume some of those behaviors hold true? Sure. But when I think about my actual real-life friends that fall into the exact same demographic segment as I do, these assumptions start to fall apart. My friend Becky abhors all social media, and my friend Amy couldn’t care less about whether or not a product is eco-friendly. On the flipside, other friends and family members in completely different demographic segments exhibit behaviors not commonly associated with those segments. My Nana, a member of The Greatest Generation, is pretty active on Facebook.
Have you Googled “how to market to Millennials” lately? I have, and each time I am met with a dizzying array of platitudes. Some examples from the first page of the over 16 million results: “marketing through mobile devices is important,” “be relevant and engaging,” “collaboration is key.” While this may be true for some Millennials, is it true for all? And do the same recommendations not hold up for non-Millennials? I asked my Nana if she wanted marketing that was “relevant and engaging,” a noted critical component of marketing to Millennials. Unsurprisingly, her answer was “who doesn’t?”
In addition to falsely deriving assumptions about our behavior, another flaw of demographic segmentation is that demographics change. I may get married and move to Iowa, but is my propensity to take advantage of a Neiman Marcus discount code going to change? Probably not.
DEMOGRAPHICS DO MATTER
This is not to say demographic information is not valuable and actionable. Used in the right way, it absolutely is. We are data omnivores, and like to think of different types of data as lenses through which you can view your customers to gain additional insight into your customer base.
One example of where demographic information is beneficial is in the development of creative materials and strategies. If you know your best customers are predominantly 50 years and older, you would not likely want to feature teenagers in your ads. Another example includes income levels; understanding the typical income level of your customers (especially your best customers) can influence price point decisions.
In my next post I will dig into another type of segmentation, jobs-to-be-done, and lay out the pros and cons of that methodology. Until then, I’m still waiting on that coupon, Neiman Marcus.
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