Why we need segmentation when designing social marketing programs

Abstract

Evolving from the marketing discipline, social marketing operates with a customer focus that involves designing programs around the satisfaction and needs of customers while ensuring that offered alternatives are more attractive than the competition. Given that social marketers are outgunned by competitors operating with larger budgets and reach, optimisation of scarce resources is critical to deliver maximum effect. This chapter presents a competitively minded view proposing that social marketers need to embrace marketing thinking and apply segmentation. Application of segmentation to understand response to programs at a segment level, use of theory to inform segmentation and application of personas to simplify complex multivariate data output generated from segmentation approaches are detailed. By applying personas, social marketers will be able to more easily understand segments and in turn plan and design programs that meet the needs and wants of more people in segments targeted. Use of the same toolkits, timeframes and thinking allows social marketers to become the enemy delivering programs, products and services that people want at a convenient time and place and price.