Market Segmentation

May 10, 2018

Designing a successful marketing strategy is a skill that eluded me as an entrepreneur. Like most small business owners, I was going off of instinct when it came to marketing and didn't have a dedicated marketing person helping me develop a coherent strategy for growth. In fact, we generally purchased leads directly, which left us in a commoditized race to the bottom, or spent money on a 'shit on the wall' approach of conferences, educational 'lunch-and-learns', network groups and Chamber of Commerce meetings, and random Google AdWord spend.

The HBS module "Market Segmentation, Target Market Selection, and Positioning" solves this problem for the budding entrepreneur who types blog posts with overused phrases like 'budding entrepreneur.'

There are three steps:

  1. Market Segmentation
  2. Target Market Selection
  3. Positioning

And four P's

  1. Product
  2. Price
  3. Place
  4. Promotion

Market Segmentation

We want to divide our customers into distinct groups based on shared characteristics - take a heterogenous market and divide it into homogenous populations. This helps us serve these populations better.