Social Marketing of Successful Components of the Initiative: Segmenting the Market to Reach the Targeted Population
Learn how to understand what market segmentation is, why you'd want to use it, and how to make it work for you.
-
WHAT IS SEGMENTING THE MARKET?
-
WHEN MIGHT YOU SEGMENT THE MARKET?
-
HOW CAN YOU SEGMENT THE MARKET?
Suppose you're trying to put together a social marketing campaign to reduce youth violence in your community.
A lot of people are going to have to change their behavior for that to happen:
- Gang members and other youth who engage in violence are going to have to find other ways to settle disputes and to solve problems and to choose to use them.
- Non-violent youth may need to learn to practice behaviors less likely to make them victims.
- Teachers, policemen, and others who deal with youth may have to change their approaches.
- Adults, in general, may have to pay more attention to young people.
- Community residents may have to make it a point to be on the streets more, especially at night.
- Parents may have to change the ways they discipline their children or even change their own attitudes about violence, and their own violent or violence-accepting behavior.
In addition, some of these people may welcome the opportunity to change, and others may resist it. Others may not even be aware that youth violence is a community problem.
You might conduct your violence reduction campaign with a single message, delivered through a particular channel - let's say a TV campaign.
But each of these groups may need a different approach to be convinced to change in ways that will affect the issue. Each of these groups is a different segment of the market. If you were selling them cars instead of promoting violence reduction, you'd do market research to find what each of them wanted in a vehicle, and then gear your ad campaign to convince them that they'd get it if they bought what you were selling.
You can segment the market in the same way for a social marketing campaign, making it more likely that your message will be heard. This section will help you understand what market segmentation is, why you'd want to use it, and how to make it work for you.
Much of the literature on social marketing seems to assume that all social marketers are large organizations with access to big media outlets and professional-quality ad campaigns. This chapter of the Tool Box assumes that social marketing can be done on any number of levels and that even small organizations with minimal budgets can use social marketing principles to achieve change in their communities.
A successful social marketing campaign can be conducted by word of mouth and hand -drawn posters if it adheres to the principles repeated throughout Chapter: Social Marketing of Successful Components of the Initiative: customer-centeredness; change for the sake of the individual and community, rather than for the organization; clear behavioral goals based on the stated needs of those who are expected to change; pre-testing of messages; and willingness to adjust not just the campaign but the substance of your services, service delivery, support, etc. to make change easier.
WHAT IS SEGMENTING THE MARKET?
"Segmenting" is a marketing term for dividing up your audience into groups according to particular criteria. The members of each group have at least one important factor in common with the other members of the same group, and that factor sets them apart from all the other groups.
The criteria that you use to determine your groups should have some relationship to how they'll respond to your message. Segmenting will help determine how you deliver your message as well as its content.
If we return to the youth violence reduction campaign referred to in the introduction, we can see several ways the different segments we need to address could be separated. "Youth" might be broken down into gang members and non-gang members, for instance, or into under-16 and 16-and-over. Your segmenting choices would depend on how different the messages might need to be to reach particular groups.
Perhaps a message delivered by a popular hip-hop group would reach most youth in the community, regardless of gang affiliation or age. But it would take a very different message and messenger to reach business people or parents. Segmenting the market can help you make sure that your message is not only getting to everyone who needs to hear it, but increases the likelihood that they will listen to it.
MARKET SEGMENTING ENHANCES YOUR ABILITY TO FIGURE OUT THE FOUR P'S OF MARKETING: PRODUCT, PRICE, PLACE, AND PROMOTION. THE DIFFERENT SEGMENTS OF YOUR TARGET POPULATION:
- Need different products (e.g. need different services, or the same service delivered in different ways, or are interested in different benefits)
- Are willing to pay different kinds of prices in time, money, or effort to make the behavior changes you're aiming for
- Can be reached in different places (through different media outlets, or only through personal contact, or only through third parties)
- Will respond to different types of promotion.
Segmenting your market helps to assure that everyone gets what he needs to support the process of change you hope he'll go through.
WHEN MIGHT YOU SEGMENT THE MARKET?
Access Checklist, Examples, PowerPoint