Imagine this – you walk into a multi-hearted, multi-minded, multi-walletted bar. You are dressed to the nines, you move like Adonis and have a buttercup-strawberry-coffee-musk-coconut-olive-oil-machine-grease scent about you. You are buying drinks for the rest of the night because you’re there to pick everyone up and to take them all home with you.
Chances of scoring? Slim, and only with those into free-riding, multi-partner, one-night stands. Not a recipe for long-term relationships is it?
No, I knew you’d agree.
Then why do most businesses court customers in the same way?
I recently facilitated a workshop for a public listed company that exceeds CAD1 billion revenue and who defines their single consumer segment as adults between ages 18 and 55 and their business segments as those companies above and below 100 employees respectively.
You may say “Hey, at CAD1bn turnover they must be doing something right…so who cares”.
Well, I do … and they should!
How much money is lost and resources wasted on trying to mean something to everyone? I’ll tell you – a lot.
Imagine if this business took that one segmentation, split it into four, made sure it meant something to each of the groups and courted accordingly. I can guarantee you that not only would revenue and profits increase significantly, but potential customers would actually be interested in what the business had to say and, perish the thought, be even more interested in what it had to say next.
The multiplier-effect of a meaningful segmentation is staggering, especially in a world where media fragmentation is exploding and prospective customers’ desires to listen are waning.
Personally I landed my beautiful actress wife only when I stopped trying to be everything to all fish and started being me to those I really wanted. It’s tough not being attractive to everyone but then again it’s better to have one than none.
The sooner businesses realize and action this the richer they will be.