Once we recognize that a company has a successful brand we need to ask:
Who is this brand being offered to?
…Everyone is an unrealistic answer, as companies are subject to capital restraints. No company, not even Coca Cola, can serve the needs and wants of an entire market, especially in the United States. People’s preferences are far too varied. The vast majority of marketers must target their offering at very specific, narrowly-defined groups of people.
A second concept, one that is not covered adequately in marketing texts, and one that I find to be extremely important to our discipline is target marketing (that is, market segmentation and the development of target markets).
The goal here is to identify a group or groups that are adequately distinct, in that they are measurable, responsive, stable, and sufficiently large. We may do this by differentiating groups based on variables such as demographics, lifecycle stage, location, behavior, needs, wants, and usage. A company may then target that segment based on the factors its offering can best fulfill. Rather than trying to influence all consumers, most companies focus one brand on one (or few) segment(s).
Clearly, as different segments are targeted, different marketing strategies are needed. So, influencing multiple groups would require multiple strategies, each of which requires its own set of resources.
Interesting Side Note: It is worth noting that marketers sometimes target one well-defined segment by appearing to target a different segment. This “false” segment (the group marketers are “pretending” to target) may be a group that the “true” segment (the group marketers are actually trying to influence) aspires to become like. The goal here is to induce this reasoning process: I want to be like this group. Therefore, I should behave like them. If they use this product or service, I should too.
An example of this is a recent campaign for a body wash. The campaign asks, Who should use this body wash? It then shows various “goofy” (slightly unusual, yet funny) high school boys claiming the type of body wash does not mater, or that it will not help them “get the girls”. The commercial ends by showing a young professional man in an urban setting. The image of the young man implies that he is well educated and confident, yet care-free; his appearance implies that he has a well-paying job; even his brief case has an implication – he is carrying a black leather satchel that implies he is professional, but still young and trendy. In short, this is a young man that has attained what many teenage boys aspire to. The young many clearly uses this brand of body wash. He sums it up with just four words, “It works for me.” The commercial concludes that this type of person uses the body wash.
Here, the young professional is the false target. The campaign is clearly targeting the high school boys who aspire to be like him, or at least to be unlike the boys previously shown.
Another advantage of segmentation is an added degree of control for companies. In today’s highly-regulated, consumer-controlled market, companies have little control of environmental factors. These include regulatory factors, industry norms, and consumer expectations, among others. By utilizing a segmentation process, firms can choose to target only the most profitable groups. They can also go as far as creating new segments.
Focusing on one or few segment also enables firms to more easily conduct marketing research regarding the buying patterns and preferences of their target market.
When I was a student, one firm that did this well was Student Advantage. The company offered a card to fulltime students, with which they could save up to fifty percent buying products and services from over 15,000 partner firms (online and brick & mortar). As a student, I used the card for discounts on Amtrak and Greyhound, which saved me significantly more than the cost of the card. Had I not used the card, I may have chosen different methods of travel. This, along with the name, makes it easy to identify this company’s target market: price-conscious college students. The company has also gathered valuable information, including the buying habits of college students. In this way it attracts partners who may wish to target this segment.
Segmenting, in short, is a way to maximize marketing’s impact (by tailoring the message to the audience) while ensuring that resources are spent in an efficient manner (by not trying to be everything for everyone).
This brings me to the three broader concepts that, in my experience, are the most important to marketing. Understanding these concepts is of even greater importance than the two previously discussed. These concepts are usually not covered specifically, though they are implied on a daily basis.
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