Customer Segmentation, Simplified
How to Conduct a Customer Segmentation Study
Consumers are more fragmented than ever. You have to find the right customer at the right time to deliver the right message.
Let’s talk about a big brand that got it all wrong. A few years ago, I took on a customer segmentation project with a restaurant chain you’ve definitely heard of. They poured millions into TV spots, programmatic media — all the things — using a consumer profile of their invention versus analyzing the reality on paper. They tailored all their creative, marketing, and advertising to this fiction, and were baffled when their revenue plummeted and their ad investments delivered abysmal results.
Why wasn’t their creative breaking through? Why didn’t their 60-second spots, replete with slow-motion close-ups of sizzling burgers and air-tossed fries, bring bodies into booths? Seasoned executives wondered where they’d got it wrong.
This is the moment when you have to question everything. Did they get lazy when creating and updating their personas? Did they allow their bias to infect their marketing to a point where the stench of it had become unbearable? Were their truths actual truths? Or had they become content to remain in their delusion?
