027: The Segmentation Issue |
I’ve felt a little left out of the news cycle recently since I’m not into either golf or baseball. But as a marketer, I can appreciate the buzz around the Green Jacket and historic rule changes because it reminds me that people know very well if they’re a part of the in crowd (and care) or if they’re like me — looking in from the outside (i.e. not caring).
Good marketing always begins with close listening to see what your community cares for. And defining the boundaries of the market, audience, or community always comes before connecting with them.
Just as it’s impossible to listen to everyone, it’s impossible to speak to everyone, which is why defining groups through segmentation increases relevancy and ultimately results.
Segmentation is so effective because it’s following cues from behavioral psychology. People want to feel special, and they want messaging that’s speaking to them as individuals.
Emails, landing pages, and ads should be influenced by trends in psychology because at the end of the day, they all land in front of human beings. And no matter how effectively we use AI, at the moment, people still understand people far better than ChatGPT can.
Snackable snippets |
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26 examples for segmenting nonprofit audiences 📖 Since everyone’s audience is different, there’s ultimately no end to the possibilities for audience segmentation. By breaking audiences into smaller groups, more relevant messaging can be served to these unique groups. With more relevant and personalized messaging, engagement will grow and activation will follow. Though it may require building more emails for each group, the results will speak for themselves. Nobody ever thought of themselves as average, so moving away from general messaging to highly personalized, relevant material is going to help your marketing efforts surpass the average. 16½ psychological biases that influence what we buy 🎧 Because marketing begins with understanding a market, and a market is really just a group of people, psychology is essential in building the most effective marketing campaigns. Richard Shotton joined The Marketing Millennials podcast and spoke through some of the key lessons that he’s learned at the intersection of psychology and marketing. One great example comes from the Bystander Effect where in large groups, people are less likely to take responsibility to help a person in need. They tend to feel like someone else should help instead of themselves. Richard had been asking for blood donors, but the messaging was for everyone in the UK. After adjusting the messaging to pinpoint specific regions, even this slight tweak led to a noticeable increase in donations. Why are all my friends so far away? 📖 This article makes a strong case for moving closer to your best friends. Somewhere along the way, most of us have been socialized (or marketed) to believe that it’s normal to move cities for jobs or to be close to our families. But it’s simply weird to move across the country to be near the people that we most enjoy sharing our time with. If you’re like me, then you often daydream of living on the same street as all your high school friends (insert college or first-job friends if these were the people you most bonded with). But we’ve been trained to think that part of growing up is letting go of these bonds. This article does a great job of asking if this is a result of maturity or just effective marketing. How to leverage AI in boosting marketing efforts 🎧 Nicole Leffer is a CMO AI advisor who empowers teams with skills and strategies for effectively leveraging AI. And Tim Lockie is the CEO of The Human Stack, a company dedicated to making tech easier for humans to use. Together they joined the Feathr team and talked about their unique perspectives on AI, but they also dove into practical tips like how to optimize prompts within ChatGPT and what projects are a better fit for people at the moment. Limited time and budgets too often keep nonprofits and associations from the marketing success they’re aiming for. This is why AI has become such an important topic. Unlocking AI could fundamentally change the way teams work and boost productivity and results. Listen in for ideas on where AI can help carry the load and where it’s better for a person to remain doing the heavy lifting.
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In the news |
The Super Mario Bros. Movie dropped last week and is shattering box office records for the year. The 1993 Mario film was an entirely different story, and part of the failure can be attributed to the marketing slogan, “This ain’t no game.” This tended to be an ineffective way of convincing millions of fans of the actual game to make the trip to the theaters.
Major League Baseball made a few big changes to the rules of the game. Word has gotten back to the MLB that games can get a little slow, so many of the new rules are attempts at picking up the pace a little and encouraging a few more steals. The move is a risk as long-time fans adjust to the changes, but it appears to be an attempt to reach new audiences.
Something for your inspiration folder |
Phew! That calls for a sigh of relief. Even Samyutha Reddy, Jasper’s head of enterprise marketing, believes that AI can’t replace human ingenuity — at least for the foreseeable future. She says, “AI augments the human experience, but it doesn’t replace the human within that experience.”