The following audio is from a blog post and video in our Marketing-to-Go series. Marketing to Go: Marketing Segmentation Strategies

Oh hey, you caught me about to eat lunch. Y’know pizza is a pretty cool thing. Not only is it delicious, but it’s also very versatile. For instance, if i’m sharing a pizza with a vegetarian, I can get meat on my section and only veggies on theirs. Or to take it further, I could split up this pizza into many smaller slices each with their own toppings so that each piece would appeal to a smaller set of people. What I’ve described here is actually very similar to a marketing concept called Market Segmentation. Let’s talk about that!

So, marketers sometimes divide their audience into similar groups called submarkets. But how many submarkets should you market to? Three? Eight? Fifty? None at all?

Let’s review the four basic Marketing Segmentation Strategies.

• Undifferentiated

First, the undifferentiated strategy.

The undifferentiated strategy means that there is no market segmentation. The entire market is treated as one group. Everyone in your market gets the same message, or with the pizza example - the same toppings. Your promotions treat your entire market as one persona.

The Concentrated strategy.

With a concentrated segmentation strategy, you isolate one, two or three primary market segments that have the most potential value. It’s like only offering three types of toppings for your pizza, appealing to three types of people.

Next, the multi-segmented strategy.

A multi-segmented strategy creates separate marketing messages for four or more different market segments. Now we’re adding more toppings to appeal to even more people.

Finally, a micro-segmented.

A micro-segmented strategy targets marketing to a very small group of people, perhaps even all the way down to the individual level. This is like offering so many different slices of pizza that have various topping changes, like anchovies and black olives or blue cheese and hamburger meat, slices that probably only a few people have an appetite for but we want to appeal to them nonetheless.

The market segmentation strategy that is right for you depends entirely on the needs of your organization and product. The best strategy for one company may not be good for another company. Choosing a segmentation strategy, however, will help give you the discipline to commit your resources to the most valuable market segments.

Now that you now about market segmentation, I’m about to segment this pizza into my mouth. Mmm … segmentation…

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