Criteria Necessary For A Market Segment Improves Marketing | Marketing

By LindaP.Morton
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Knowing the five criteria necessary for a market segment helps you, as a small business owner, to improve your marketing.

Effective marketing caters to your best potential customers - your target market.

After identifying your target market by segments. Then you can design your marketing tactics specifically to meet their needs and preferences.

The five criteria necessary for a market segment are:

First Criteria Necessary For A Market Segment: Homogeneity Within The Market Segment

Second Criteria Necessary For A Market Segment: People In The Market Segment Have Different Characteristics Than The Mass Market

Third Criteria Necessary For A Market Segment: People In The Market Segment Can Be Identified And Counted

Fourth Criteria Necessary For A Market Segment: An Accessible And Actionable Market Segment

Fifth Criteria Necessary For A Market Segments: The Numbers of People In The Segment Are Enough To Render A Profit

Understanding all five criteria necessary for a market segment will make your marketing more successful. The first two are covered in this article. You can get information about the other three at my blog.

First Criteria Necessary For A Market Segment: Homogeneity Within The Market Segment

For a segment to exist, the people in it must share characteristics that make them similar in some significant way.

For example, generations comprise market segments. Baby Boomers have certain characteristics in common. Generation Xers have certain characteristics in common, but Xers characteristics differ from Boomers'. Marketing to a Boomer the same way that you market to a Generation Xer will fail.

When the people in a market segment share many characteristics, it's easier to design a marketing campaign for them.

The more alike the people in a market segment are, the easier it is to target them with the same product or service. The more they have in common, the easier it is to select appeals and language to market across the segment.

Second Criteria Necessary For A Market Segment: Differences Between People In The Market Segment And Other People

Heterogeneity refers to how members of the market segment differ from people who are not in the market segment.

Market segment members must be different in some significant way from others in the mass market. Without significant differences, you have:

No characteristics to distinguish the market segment from everybody else,

No reason to select the market segment as a target market, and

No rationale for creating a marketing program.

Differences between market segments create heterogeneity and provide another criteria necessary for a market segment.

Thus, each market segment requires different marketing strategies and tactics than others in the mass market.

Criteria Necessary For A Market Segment: Synthesis And Recommendation

By identifying a market segment in which people share many characteristics that differ from the mass market, you will improve your marketing

Even if the people in a segment do share similar characteristics and those characteristics differ from those in other segments, you still need three more criteria for a market segment. (1) There needs to be enough people in the segment (2) to make marketing to them worthwhile. And (3) they must be the type of people who will take your desired actions.

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Read other Criteria for a Market Segment.You can get a free report on Market Segmentation there. Or get a free ebook: Marketing Your Small Business

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