Everything You Need to Know About Segmentation Bases 

Market segmentation is a powerful process as it divides your target audience into groups so you can effectively target them based on characteristics such as the challenges they face and / or how they respond to particular marketing efforts.

The most effective way to determine which characteristics to use to group your target audience is to use segmentation bases.

In this blog post we cover the definition of segmentation bases, how to use them in your company and how you can use several segmentation bases at the same time.

Before we dive into the five fundamentals of segmentation, let’s cover the fundamentals.

Segmentation basics in marketing

Marketing segmentation assumes that all of your customers are unique and can be categorized based on common defining characteristics or characteristics that you determine. These properties or traits almost always fit into the five bases of segmentation that we will review below.

Benefits of Using Segmentation Based in Marketing

By using segmentation bases in marketing, you open up opportunities that will help you:

• Enhance the customer experience.
• Market your products effectively.
• Develop targeted marketing and sales support materials.
• Identify areas for product development.
• Show your target audience how you can solve their challenges.

Segmentation bases in marketing operations

Marketing Operations is defined as “… people, processes and technologies that drive a company’s entire marketing strategy and increase the chances of success.”

While working on marketing, data strategy, implementation, and reporting, the Marketing Ops team can link leads and contacts to your segmentation bases. That means they can come up with strategies to target these customer segments effectively, as well as reports, relevant dashboards, and metrics to track your success in marketing to these audiences.

This gives your larger marketing team access to more organized marketing segments, contact details, reports, and relevant metrics. That means better customer experiences that convert more audience members.

Now let’s look at the five bases of segmentation and their definitions.

1. Psychographic segmentation

Psychographic segmentation refers to a person’s psychological characteristics. This includes the lifestyle preferences and patterns of your target audiences and why they think the way they do. It also includes their typical activities, interests, and opinions.

2. Demographic segmentation

Demographic segmentation refers to the statistical description and socio-economic characteristics of your audience. These include age, education and gender, birth rates, gender, marital status, income and employment status.

3. Geographic segmentation

Geographic segmentation refers to the place where your audience lives and / or works. With geographic segmentation, you can go as far or as detailed as you want. For example, you can group your audience by continent, country, state / city, city, neighborhood, and so on.

4. Firmographic segmentation

Firmographic segmentation refers to the attributes of a company and is helpful for B2B companies developing their segmentation fundamentals. These include size, industry and location.

(One could think of firmographic segmentation as demographic segmentation, but for a company.)

5. Behavioral segmentation

Behavioral segmentation refers to the actions, habits and interactions of a target group. If you think this sounds a bit like demographic segmentation, you are not wrong. But it goes deeper into buying habits than demographic segmentation.

For example, behavioral segmentation provides insight into the benefits one gets from buying and using a particular product, as well as how ready (or unwilling) they are to convert into a customer.

Pro tip: Use HubSpot’s behavioral targeting tool to personalize marketing reach on a large scale while making every interaction unique.

Other relevant features you can access with HubSpot’s behavioral targeting tool include:

• Insights into the way your audience is interacting with your website / content.
• Active lists for advanced segmentation, targeting and targeting.
• Event-based triggers to send messages to audience members at the right time.

Use multiple segmentation bases

You don’t have to use just one or two segmentation bases – you can use all five or a mix of them.

And once you’ve chosen the segmentation bases you want to move forward with, you won’t get stuck with them forever. As your business evolves, so do your customer base and target audience. This means that over time you will naturally want to review, update, add to, and remove your list of segmentation bases.

The key is to accurately use the segmentation basics that are important to your business and apply them so that you can effectively target and reach the audiences they contain.

Before we give some tips on using multiple segmentation bases, let’s take a moment to explain why you should use multiple segmentation bases.

Why use multiple segmentation bases?

Organizations use multiple bases of segmentation – a process also known as. is known Multi-segment marketing – because the product or service they are selling applies to target audiences in different ways.

For example, a company that sells tennis skirts may sell skirts to customers who play tennis a lot and to other customers who don’t play tennis, but a training skirt for other activities (e.g., running, walking, etc.).

Multiple bases of segmentation are also often used when your company sells more than one product or service. For example, the company that sells tennis skirts may also sell tennis rackets and tennis shoes. The customers who need a skirt versus a tennis racket or shoes need to be addressed differently. Especially when these tennis items are intended for both men, women and children.

How to use multiple segmentation bases

Using multiple bases of segmentation will give you a better understanding of the people who make up your target audience. This enables you to target them more effectively, meet (and exceed) their needs and expectations, and convert more of them into customers.

Here are some tips to keep in mind when using multiple segmentation bases:

• Determine what segmentation basics you want to set up for your unique audience and how detailed you want to reach those segments.
• Work internally across marketing (and even sales) as you identify and define your customer segments to make sure they are as specific and helpful as possible.
• Review and update your segmentation basics as needed (see e.g. quarterly to make sure they evolve with your business).
• Get feedback from your team members (you can do this across Marketing and Sales) on the way your segments are organized. You can also survey (and incentivize) your current customers or those who have recently converted in some way to get their feedback on your marketing content and targeting efforts.

Use segmentation bases to grow better

There are a number of advantages to using segmentation bases. You can better understand your audience, target your leads and prospects more effectively, create and offer marketing and sales materials that better meet their needs, identify product development and marketing opportunities, and much more. Start working Your Business segmentation fundamentals to grow better.