It’s easy to get people to buy into the idea of “Don’t test to win, test to learn.” However, when it comes to segmentation, it’s sometimes more difficult to get people over to the camp of “Don’t segment to align with your previously held ideas, segment to learn.” This may be because this saying is certainly not as short, sweet, and catchy; but I’m a strong believer in segment to learn.
I’ve been approached before with: “We did a segmentation of the market; can you tie this back to our customer base?”. This means that they did a segmentation based on survey data of the population, these people could be using your product, but they’re not necessarily using your product. This survey probably asked about the functionality they need, what they’re trying to do, and who they are.
Although sometimes we might do things with data that mystify and dazzle, we are not wizards. I cannot take your segmentation of the market and find those same segments in our customer base. Our customers are not necessarily representative of the market, and I don’t have your market survey data for all customers. But what I have is even more precious, actual behaviors that your customer has taken.
These actions include things like:
· I can see how often someone has visited our website
