<p>Marketing often draws on the concepts of segmentation, targeting and positioning (STP) in order to understand and direct marketing activities. And while this classic triple-threat combination is useful in a wide array of marketing activities, it&rsquo;s important to note that user segmentation and market segmentation are applied in somewhat different ways in the digital customer journey than the traditional journey.</p>

<p>Marketers are always trying to convey the appropriate message to the right group, but in digital marketing, it&rsquo;s more difficult to assess buyer behaviour and understand their journey and therefore it&rsquo;s harder to segment your audience and target your message.</p>

<p>Here we&rsquo;ll discuss the importance of segmentation and targeting in the digital sphere as well as offer a few tips and tools to get you going on the right track.</p>

<h3>What is the Buyer Persona?</h3>

<p>You&rsquo;ve probably heard the term &ldquo;buyer persona&rdquo; floating around in business and marketing circles and may have wondered what it was. A buyer persona is a description of your ideal customer. Creating a few different buyer personas can help you understand your audience better in order to target lead and sales strategies and segment your audience.</p>

<p>When creating a buyer persona template, you&rsquo;ll want to essentially visualize whom the people are to most likely purchase your goods and services. Here are some questions to consider as you build some personas of your ideal customer:</p>

<ul>
	<li>What do they do?</li>
	<li>How old are they?</li>
	<li>What are their hobbies?</li>
	<li>What is their salary?</li>
	<li>Where do they live?</li>
	<li>What are their short and long-term goals?</li>
</ul>

<p>The point of this exercise is to understand different ways that you can approach them with a message that lets them know you can help them achieve what they want or need.</p>

<h3>What is Audience Segmentation?</h3>

<p>Audience segmentation is when you divide your audience into different groups based on various criteria, such as demographics and media use. Digital marketers segment audiences as key part of a targeted marketing strategy.</p>

<p>Audience segmentation is crucial in the digital sphere because consumers are more empowered than ever. Not only that, they are making purchasing decisions at a faster rate than ever before. So, the challenge for digital marketers is to understand how to catch them in the process of the buying decision &ndash; to do this, they need to do everything they can to understand the way their audience thinks and behaves.</p>

<p>If you&rsquo;re wondering about where to start when it comes to audience segmentation, here are a few key areas to think about.</p>

<h3>Past Purchasing Behaviour</h3>

<p>You want to segment your previous buyers out from new buyers, as you will be engaging differently with different sets of people based on the relationships you have already built. To this end, your segments can be differentiated based on buying patterns and even the types of products they&rsquo;re purchasing. The key will be to anticipate their future needs so that you can show them what they need before they even really realize it.</p>

<h3>Key Social Channels</h3>

<p>Understanding how and where people are consuming your content can go a long way towards how you market your goods and services to a different audience. It can tell you about the types of things they prefer as well as how they interact with their friends. There are also plenty of ways you can use your social channels to target, so the two go hand-in-hand in various ways when you are working on a strategy.</p>

<h3>Psychographic / Lifestyle Segmentation</h3>

<p>Sometimes people segment their audience according to particular traits, cultural values, or lifestyles. These can also be related to current events. This kind of segmentation can be difficult to pinpoint because it&rsquo;s not always in the form of concrete information like geographic segmentation or age, which are clear and concrete sets of data. It may be more about values, preferences or lifestyle factors. Psychographics requires that marketers dig a little deeper. To this end, things like Facebook polls and quizzes can work wonders.</p>

<h3>Targeting</h3>

<p>Once you&rsquo;ve segmented your audience into the appropriate groups, you&rsquo;ll then look into the best ways to focus on the different groups and catch their attention via marketing campaigns. You&rsquo;re going to be building this based on their demographic characteristics &ndash; and their demographics and buyer persona are going to give you clues about the types of things they value.</p>

<p>Once you&rsquo;ve delivered effective messaging, you&rsquo;re going to want to understand how to address and retain both the customers that have already engaged (for instance, through customer loyalty programs) as well as how to address the customers that didn&rsquo;t follow through to make a purchase.</p>

<h3>Retargeting</h3>

<p>Understanding why people made the decision not to open an email or stay on your website can provide valuable clues. To this end, remarketing or retargeting techniques can help. Remarketing techniques usually use cookies to track your audiences and see what they&rsquo;re doing once they&rsquo;re off your site. The cookie helps to keep your targeted ads running to people who have already visited your site but have left.</p>

<p>Retargeting is best used as part of a broad-based strategy and is not appropriate for all sizes of business. Use it with both inbound and outbound content marketing strategies to help with conversions across multiple platforms. Note that you&rsquo;ll need to understand what&rsquo;s driving your traffic first before implementing retargeting programs &ndash; this isn&rsquo;t a way to bring traffic.</p>

<p>All of this boils down to not only solid customer engagement in a real-time way, but basically data. Are your customers human beings that should be addressed this way? Absolutely. But they are also full of information that can help you to form and refine your strategy in order to move into better STP activities in the future.</p>

<h3>TIP: Offer Unique Experiences</h3>

<p>You can use social channels in various ways to offer customers unique experiences in order to build brand awareness and better engagement with specific initiatives and products. Engaging in real time can help you understand their buying habits and journey. So, when you&rsquo;re offering them an interesting experience at different phases, you are able to find a greater depth of information and they can learn more about you too.</p>

<p>This can take the form of events, contests, discounts &ndash; whatever suits your brand story and offers something of value to the customer. Something as simple as a hashtag can actually work wonders when it comes to real-time interaction using social media.<a href="https://www.redbull.com/us-en/top-10-put-a-can-on-it-photos-2014" target="_blank">Red Bull&rsquo;s #putacanonit</a> is a great example of a hashtag campaign that was inspired by someone&rsquo;s photo.</p>

<h3>TIP: Useful Tools</h3>

<p>There are a number of tools out there on the web and many content marketing tools will have segmentation and targeting features built in. Here are a few multipurpose as well as specific tools you may want to test out if you don&rsquo;t have anything that&rsquo;s working well for you yet.</p>

<ul>
	<li><a href="http://marketo.com/" target="_blank">Marketo</a> and <a href="http://mailchimp.com/" target="_blank">Mail Chimp</a> are email automation systems have built-in setups that help you to segment audiences.</li>
	<li><a href="https://www.google.com/analytics/tag-manager/" target="_blank">Google Tag Manager</a> allows users to develop their own rules to integrate with specific tags and web services. You might want to have a bit of a web developing knowledge to use this one and it can be used in more complex ways than some of the generalized tools.</li>
	<li>Activators allow you to import your non-digital audience information (for instance, information you might collect at events) and the like you can use activators (<a href="https://www.umbel.com/activation-campaigns/" target="_blank">like this one from Umbel</a>) to help you understand and segment data.</li>
	<li><a href="https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2016/01/27/facebook-custom-audiences" target="_blank">Facebook&rsquo;s Custom Audiences tool</a> is a simple way to target your Facebook ads via emails. You just export emails into Facebook and create a customer list based on your preferred characteristics.</li>
</ul>

<h3>Final Thoughts</h3>

<p>The more personalized your digital marketing schemes are, the better you will be able to engage with customers. These days there&rsquo;s more and more technology coming out (think chatbots and automated self-serve kiosks) that offer businesses the opportunity to engage at new levels of personalization.</p>

<p>Automation and robots can work well towards making things more efficient, but the most important way to build brand awareness and understand your customers is of course by engaging in real-time as often as possible.</p>

<p><strong>Related posts:</strong></p>

<ul>
	<li><a href="https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/blog/5-key-components-of-landing-pages-that-convert">5 Key Components of Landing Pages That Convert</a></li>
	<li><a href="https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/blog/how-to-ask-your-marketing-manager-for-a-raise">How to Ask Your Marketing Manager for a Raise</a></li>
	<li><a href="https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/blog/the-importance-of-structured-data-in-seo">The Importance of Structured Data in SEO</a></li>
	<li><a href="https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/blog/the-rise-of-mobile-commerce-how-your-business-can-take-advantage">The Rise of Mobile Commerce: How Your Business Can Take Advantage</a></li>
	<li><a href="https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/blog/inbound-marketing-generates-twice-many-leads-outbound">Inbound Marketing Generates More Than Twice as Many Leads as Outbound</a></li>
</ul>

https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/dmi-studentportal-uploads/v3blog/customer-segmentation-blog.jpg

How Do You Effectively Target Your Customer Segments?

customer-segmentation-targeting-a-guide

[[p]]To effectively target your customer segments, you must first learn how to create buyer personas so that you can properly segment them based on past purchasing behavior, digital platforms where they interact with your brand, and more.&nbsp;[[/p]]

[[p]]Marketing often draws on the concepts of segmentation, targeting and positioning (STP) in order to understand and direct marketing activities. And while this classic triple-threat combination is useful in a wide array of marketing activities, it&rsquo;s important to note that user segmentation and market segmentation are applied in somewhat different ways in the digital customer journey than the traditional journey.[[/p]]

[[p]]Marketers are always trying to convey the appropriate message to the right group, but in digital marketing, it&rsquo;s more difficult to assess buyer behavior and understand their journey and therefore it&rsquo;s harder to segment your audience and target your message.[[/p]]

[[p]]Here we&rsquo;ll discuss the importance of segmentation and targeting in the digital sphere in the age of AI, as well as offer a few tips and tools to get you going on the right track:[[/p]]

[[ul]]
	[[li]][[a href="#heading_85192"]]What is a buyer persona?[[/a]][[/li]]
	[[li]][[a href="#heading_85194"]]What is audience segmentation?[[/a]][[/li]]
	[[li]][[a href="#heading_85204"]]How do you target customer segments effectively?[[/a]][[/li]]
	[[li]][[a href="#heading_85218"]]How do you retarget potential customers?[[/a]][[/li]]
	[[li]][[a href="#heading_85222"]]What are useful tools in targeting and retargeting leads?[[/a]][[/li]]
	[[li]][[a href="#heading_85224"]]What is the future of targeting and retargeting?[[/a]][[/li]]
[[/ul]]

[[p]]A [[a href="https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/blog/the-beginners-guide-to-defining-buyer-personas" target="_blank"]]buyer persona[[/a]] is a description of your ideal customer. Creating a few different buyer personas can help you understand your audience better in order to target lead and sales strategies and segment your audience.[[/p]]

[[p]]When creating a buyer persona, you&rsquo;ll want to visualize what kinds of people are most likely to purchase your goods and services. Here are some questions to consider as you build some personas of your ideal customer:[[/p]]

[[ul]]
	[[li]]What do they do?[[/li]]
	[[li]]How old are they?[[/li]]
	[[li]]What are their hobbies?[[/li]]
	[[li]]What is their salary?[[/li]]
	[[li]]Where do they live?[[/li]]
	[[li]]What are their short and long-term goals?[[/li]]
[[/ul]]

[[p]]The point of this exercise is to understand different ways that you can approach them with a message that lets them know you can help them achieve what they want or need.[[/p]]

[[p]][[strong]]Pro Tip: [[/strong]]Use a [[a href="https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/resources/toolkits/buyer-persona-template" target="_blank"]]Buyer Persona Template[[/a]] that will guide you in asking the right questions about your customers.[[/p]]

[[p]]Audience segmentation is when you divide your audience into different groups based on various criteria, such as demographics and media use. Digital marketers segment audiences as key part of a targeted marketing strategy.[[/p]]

[[p]]Audience segmentation is crucial in the digital sphere because consumers are more empowered than ever. Not only that, but they are also making purchasing decisions at a faster rate than ever before. So, the challenge for digital marketers is to understand how to catch them in the process of the buying decision. To do this, they need to do everything they can to understand the way their audience thinks and behaves.[[/p]]

[[p]]If you&rsquo;re wondering about where to start when it comes to audience segmentation, here are a few key areas to think about and activities you can start:[[/p]]

[[p]]You want to segment your previous buyers out from new buyers, as you will be engaging differently with different sets of people based on the relationships you have already built.&nbsp;[[/p]]

[[p]]To this end, your segments can be differentiated based on buying patterns and even the types of products they&rsquo;re purchasing. The key will be to anticipate their future needs so that you can show them what they need before they even really realize it.[[/p]]

[[p]]Understanding how and where people are consuming your content can go a long way towards how you market your goods and services to a different audience. It can tell you about the types of things they prefer as well as how they interact with their friends. There are also plenty of ways you can use your social channels to target, so the two go hand-in-hand in various ways when you are working on a strategy.[[/p]]

[[p]]Sometimes, people segment their audience according to particular traits, cultural values, or lifestyles. These can also be related to current events. This is a more advantageous type of segmentation compared to demographics, especially for certain brands. Of course, if your product is for a specific age group or gender, then demographics is the way to go. However, if it concerns interests or hobbies, then it would be a completely different story. If you&rsquo;re promoting a&nbsp;detective show, then it would be unfair if you only market it to men of a certain age, right? That&rsquo;s because it may attract a different cohort too, such as women and younger people.&nbsp;[[/p]]

[[p]]Previously, this kind of segmentation was difficult to pinpoint because&nbsp;information like geographic segmentation or age, which are clear and concrete sets of data, wasn&#39;t also available.[[/p]]

[[p]]However, advertising platforms have gotten smarter. For example, when running Meta ads, you can now target people based on interests. On other platforms like Tiktok or X (Twitter), the algorithm is also smart enough to show your content organically to people who would likely interact with you or your brand.&nbsp;[[/p]]

[[p]]In a nutshell, psychographics&nbsp;is more about values, preferences, interests, or lifestyle factors. Psychographics requires that marketers dig a little deeper. To this end,&nbsp;doing online surveys or focus groups can work wonders.[[/p]]

[[p]]Once you&rsquo;ve segmented your audience, the next step is targeting. This means focusing your marketing campaigns to reach the right people with the right message. Targeting today spans both organic and paid strategies across multiple touchpoints.[[/p]]

[[p]]Organic targeting involves optimizing your content, AEO, and social presence to attract specific customer personas based on interests and intent-driven keywords. As mentioned previously, social media&rsquo;s algorithm has gotten good in delivering your content in front of people who resonate with your brand and message.[[/p]]

[[p]]Another thing you can do is search intent mapping (e.g., informational vs. transactional content) and hyper-personalized content hubs on platforms like LinkedIn or YouTube help you appear naturally in the spaces where your audience spends their time. You can even [[a href="https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/blog/optimize-content-for-ai-search" target="_blank"]]optimize your content for AI search discovery[[/a]].&nbsp;[[/p]]

[[p]]On the other hand, paid targeting leverages ad platforms like Meta Ads, Google Ads, and LinkedIn Campaign Manager to segment users by behavior, intent, demographics, or even purchase likelihood.&nbsp;[[/p]]

[[p]]Tools like Google&rsquo;s Performance Max campaigns and Meta&rsquo;s Advantage+ audience targeting use machine learning to refine audience reach and deliver ads to users most likely to convert.[[/p]]

[[p]][[strong]]Pro Tip:[[/strong]] You can connect these platforms to proprietary data you have or your website so it can have a rich database that will refine targeting. For example, there are targeting options in Meta where they can find visitors of certain pages in your website.[[/p]]

[[p]]You can use social channels&nbsp;to offer customers unique experiences to build brand awareness and better engagement with specific initiatives and products. Engaging in real time can help you understand their [[a href="https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/resources/lessons/web-email_customer-journey-and-conversion_akcz" target="_blank"]]buying habits and journey[[/a]]. So, when you&rsquo;re offering them an interesting experience at different phases, you are able to access more&nbsp;information and they can learn more about you, too.[[/p]]

[[p]]This can take the form of events, contests, discounts, or whatever suits your brand story and offers something of value to the customer. Something as simple as a hashtag can actually work wonders when it comes to real-time interaction using social media.[[/p]]

[[p]]Campaigns that combine creativity and community participation often perform best. For instance, [[a href="https://my.digitalmarketinginstitute.com/resources/case-studies/lego-the-building-blocks-of-a-modern-day-superbrand" target="_blank"]]LEGO&rsquo;[[/a]]s &ldquo;Rebuild the World&rdquo; challenge encouraged user-generated content across TikTok and Instagram, creating massive organic reach through its hashtag #RebuildTheWorld.[[/p]]

Lego’s Rebuild the World campaign. Source: Lego

[[p]]Similarly, Heineken&rsquo;s &ldquo;Virtual Cheers&rdquo; campaign used social engagement and gamified experiences to deepen digital community bonds during event seasons. These experiences not only improve engagement but provide behavioral data that can be used to refine future targeting strategies.[[/p]]

[[p]]AI-powered targeting has transformed how marketers identify and engage potential customers. Artificial intelligence helps marketers go beyond traditional segmentation. It is moving toward real-time, behavior-based personalization across both organic and paid media:&nbsp;[[/p]]

[[ul]]
	[[li]]AI for PPC Optimization: Advertisers can now use AI and automation for PPC. Platforms like Google Ads&rsquo; Smart Bidding and Microsoft Advertising&rsquo;s Predictive Audiences use machine learning to adjust bids dynamically based on predicted conversion probability, time of day, device, and audience behavior. This automation allows campaigns to adapt continuously, improving ROI without manual intervention.[[/li]]
	[[li]]AI-Powered Segmentation: Tools such as HubSpot&rsquo;s AI segmentation or Adobe Experience Platform&rsquo;s predictive audiences cluster users based on interests, web interactions, and purchase stage, enabling marketers to deliver highly personalized messages at scale.[[/li]]
	[[li]]Dynamic Creative Optimization (DCO): AI tools like Meta&rsquo;s Advantage+ Creative or Amazon DSP&rsquo;s Dynamic Ads automatically change ad visuals or copy based on user data such as browsing history or recent interactions. There are also options to deliver ads based on one&rsquo;s primary language if this option is ticked on.&nbsp;[[/li]]
	[[li]]Predictive Content Targeting: With AI-powered insights, you can anticipate what content or product a user will likely engage with next.&nbsp;[[/li]]
	[[li]]Conversational AI and Chatbots: Integrating AI assistants helps qualify leads automatically, guide users through personalized journeys, and collect behavioral data that feeds back into your targeting model.[[/li]]
[[/ul]]

[[p]]Understanding why people made the decision not to open an email or stay on your website can provide valuable clues. To this end, remarketing or [[a href="https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/resources/lessons/marketing-automation_retargeting_ov7b" target="_blank"]]retargeting[[/a]] techniques can help. Remarketing techniques usually use cookies to track your audiences and see what they&rsquo;re doing once they&rsquo;re off your site. The cookie helps to keep your targeted ads running to people who have already visited your site but have left.[[/p]]

[[p]]Modern retargeting tactics have evolved to prioritize privacy and relevance. As tracking cookies are phased out, marketers increasingly use first-party data, consent-based remarketing, and AI-powered predictive audiences.&nbsp;[[/p]]

[[p]]For example, Spotify&rsquo;s segmented retargeting emails are dynamically tailored to users who paused premium trials, offering playlists and discounts that matched their listening habits.[[/p]]

[[p]]Another example is retail giant Amazon that sends emails based on past purchase behavior and recommends similar products.&nbsp;[[/p]]

Email remarketing: suggesting books by authors you previously purchased from

[[p]]When done right, retargeting supports both inbound and outbound marketing by guiding users smoothly through the conversion funnel.[[/p]]

[[p]][[strong]]Pro Tip: [[/strong]]Remarketing should always complement and not replace broader awareness campaigns. There is always room to find new customers as trends shift.[[/p]]

[[p]]There&rsquo;s no shortage of tools available to help digital marketers segment, target, and retarget audiences effectively. Many modern platforms now include built-in AI segmentation, predictive analytics, and privacy-compliant tracking to support both organic and paid strategies:[[/p]]

[[ul]]
	[[li]]HubSpot: An all-in-one CRM and marketing automation platform that offers AI-powered audience segmentation, behavior-based email workflows, and integrated ad targeting. You can also enrol users into a workflow from captured leads from other platforms&rsquo; ads.&nbsp;[[/li]]
	[[li]]Marketo Engage (Adobe): A robust marketing automation tool with advanced lead scoring and dynamic content personalization.[[/li]]
	[[li]]Mailchimp: Now evolved beyond email, Mailchimp provides audience tagging, predictive demographics, and retargeting ads via Google and Meta integrations. Great for SMBs and e-commerce brands.[[/li]]
	[[li]]Google Tag Manager: Enables custom tracking setups and integration with analytics, ad pixels, and consent modes. This is essential for managing cookies and event-based triggers in a privacy-first world.[[/li]]
	[[li]]Meta Custom Audiences &amp; Advantage Plus: Lets you upload customer lists (emails, phone numbers) or create lookalike audiences based on site visitors, app users, or engagement data. You can also use it to have an exclusion list so that your ad won&rsquo;t show to a specified audience. Paired with Advantage+, it automates creative and audience optimization.[[/li]]
	[[li]]LinkedIn Matched Audiences: Perfect for B2B targeting. Upload contact lists, target website retargeting pools, or build [[a href="https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/blog/your-guide-to-account-based-marketing" target="_blank"]]account-based marketing (ABM)[[/a]] segments directly within Campaign Manager.[[/li]]
	[[li]]Klaviyo: A favorite among e-commerce brands, Klaviyo uses purchase behavior and predictive analytics to drive hyper-personalized email and SMS retargeting flows.[[/li]]
	[[li]]Segment by Twilio: A customer data platform (CDP) that unifies data from web, mobile, and CRM sources to create real-time audience profiles for activation across ad platforms and email tools.[[/li]]
	[[li]]Umbel, now part of Oracle: Helps activate offline data (e.g., event sign-ups, in-store purchases) by matching it to digital identities for omnichannel targeting.[[/li]]
	[[li]]Drift: Conversational marketing platform that uses AI chatbots to qualify leads in real time and feed behavioral data back into your targeting engine.[[/li]]
[[/ul]]

[[p]][[strong]]Pro Tip:[[/strong]] These tools work best when integrated into a unified stack that connects CRM, analytics, ads, and content&mdash;allowing you to move seamlessly from segmentation to personalization to conversion.[[/p]]

[[p]]The future of targeting is personalization, AI, and real-time engagement The more personalized your digital marketing strategies are, the deeper your engagement and the higher your conversion rates. We&rsquo;ve seen an explosion of technologies like AI-driven PPC, predictive audience modeling, chatbots, and automated self-serve experiences that enable unprecedented levels of customization.[[/p]]

[[p]]While automation and AI make campaigns more efficient, nothing replaces the power of real-time human connection. In short: use data and technology to inform your strategy, but always design your campaigns around the human on the other side of the screen. That&rsquo;s how you turn targeting and retargeting into long-term customer relationships.[[/p]]

[[p]]Understanding your target customer and knowing the market is crucial to drive business success. Our [[a href="https://digitalmarketinginstitute.com/students/courses/expert-diploma-in-digital-marketing" target="_blank"]]Digital Marketing Expert course[[/a]] will help you master strategy and leadership, use search marketing to drive sales, advance your knowledge of social media marketing and explore advanced strategies to deliver seamless customer experiences. Sign up today![[/p]]

How Do You Effectively Target Your Customer Segments?

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