Once you’ve identified your business’s target market, you’re going to find that target market really has more than one group within it. You can divide that market up into more than one and you do this by using market segmentation. This allows you to focus in on one group at a time from a marketing point of view and to make your marketing message more powerful.

Quite often your business will have different marketing methods depending on the unique characteristics of the segment within your market.

You can segment your market based on many things. Think of what you’re asked to fill out on a registration form or when you complete a consumer preference survey. Simpler still, how often you buy something.

There are huge databases created from all types of sources compiled into readily accessible databases created to form mailing lists.

Here are some categories:

#1 Demographics.

This is segmentation by age, sex, income, marital status, family size, occupation, race, etc. Demographics can help maximize your marketing effectiveness.

#2 Psychographics.

These databases show customer behavior, their needs, their shopping patterns, frequency of purchases, their brand preferences, values, goals, and wants.

#3 Spendographics.

Actually we made this word up, but it’s very descriptive because the most relevant of all research is this one. We want to know what their spending habits are. This is your best research.

We want to find out how frequently they spend and how recently they’ve spent. Then use your direct mail as a method of marketing to these segments.