The B.I.G. Blog

In the professor’s perfect world, where everything matches right up with the textbook and the theory, our market segments would be perfectly defined and exclusive, with no overlap and easily differentiated characteristics that point us in the right direction. However, the real world will very rarely indulge us in such a way. We have to look into the muddy waters of reality and discern where our segments begin and end, often fighting through all the overlap and noise caused by the rest of the market.

If you’re selling to everyone, you’re selling to no one. Even if you want to sell to “everyone”, you need to focus on segmentation. With this, you can speak directly to each target market. As we talked about with campaigns, messaging needs to be precise and consistent, speaking directly to the specific needs of each group you want to reach.

Thinking about a marketing campaign is sort of like seeing the old tractors and machines at the state fair. There are so many moving parts. You zoom in on one area to see how this gear moves that axle which connects back to the motor that produces its drive by doing this thing. You zoom out and you how the whole thing works together to produce the intended results, but to get any detail you have to zoom back in on something. Marketing campaigns have just about as many moving parts and require just as much attention to detail in order to grasp what is really happening.