No two customers are alike. So it stands to reason that in order to reach, target, convert and retain them, it’s important that you identify certain trends and patterns that occur, no matter how many products or services you offer.
This is called behavioural segmentation which is a part of behavioural marketing and is very useful for grouping customers together based on their behaviours and actions.
What is behavioural segmentation?
Behavioural segmentation refers to a process in marketing that divides customers into segments according to their behavioural patterns, particularly towards an online business.
These segments typically group customers by:
- General attitude toward the product, service or brand
- Use of the product or service
- Overall awareness of your products or services
- Purchasing behaviour & tendencies (for example, only buying from you on special occasions like birthdays or holidays, etc).
If you use behavioural segmentation as a business owner, at the very least, you will gain a more holistic understanding of your audience, which will enable you to tailor products or services to particular customer needs.
Segmenting variables
When you begin categorising your audience, it’s best to consider the below variables:
- Sought-after product or service benefits
- Customer’s product or service usage rate
- Customer’s loyalty status
- Stage of the buyer’s journey that a potential customer is in
- Size of your market segment
- Level of accessibility to your product or service
- How niche your market segment is
To help you further with this process, we’ve included some behavioural segmentation examples.
1. Purchase behaviour
Analysing a customer’s purchase history can tell you a lot about how and why they convert. It can also show you which stages of the buyer’s journey went smoothly and where they may have hit a roadblock. Not to mention, give you an idea of which behaviours will likely lead to a conversion or sale.
2. When and why
When trying to determine when and why a customer made a purchase, helpful questions to ask include:
- Was it a special occasion that influenced their decision?
- Possibly a specific time of the year that led them to interact with your brand?
- Or maybe their purchase decision was based on the time of day or even a particular life stage?
3. Customer loyalty
When segmenting customers based on behaviour, look at customer loyalty. Analyse which parts of the buyer’s journey result in customer loyalty and ask yourself, how you can keep customers loyal and feeling delighted with your brand?
Then take a look at which potential customers are likely to become loyal in the future based on the common attributes they share.
4. Particular benefits
Find out what your customers are looking to get out of the product or service that you offer. Then ask yourself, out of all the features and benefits, which ones are they most interested in and believe will solve their problems?
5. Stages of the customer journey
Knowing which stages of the customer journey are most likely to convert and which stages the potential customer has trouble with is highly beneficial when it comes to predicting behaviour and segmenting customers based on that behaviour.
But oftentimes, customer journeys are not all that simple, which makes it very difficult to keep track of everything as there are so many touchpoints that all contribute to the behaviour and decision making of that particular customer.
That’s why it’s best to use a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool like Monday.com to keep track of all the interactions throughout the buyer’s journey.
6. Level of engagement
You can additionally segment your customers based on their level of engagement. For example, high engagement versus average engagement versus occasional engagement.
Highly engaged people are those who interact with and purchase from your business regularly. Average users are those who engage with your brand regularly but don’t really take full advantage of all your business has to offer. Occasional users might engage with your business once or twice, but don’t really have an ongoing need for the products or services that you offer.
Get better results
Behavioural segmentation, when done correctly, can be used to effectively and efficiently target leads and customers with the purpose of increasing conversions.
It can also help with appropriate communication and follow up and can aid in the tailoring of your content in a way that feels both highly relevant and personal.
