Customer segmentation is the practice of dividing a customer base into groups of individuals that are similar in specific ways relevant to marketing, such as age, gender, interests, and spending habits. (taken from salesforce.com)
A customer segment acts as a cluster of entities that share some particular traits in terms of the frequency, the WHY, and the HOW related to a particular habit or action.
As an early-stage startup, the way you engage with your customer segments is key, therefore a prioritization of the target segments is mandatory. Successful founders and product managers use a quick and easy way to decide which customer segment they should engage in business relationships with, based on the following set of criteria:
- Size of Group – how big is the target group
- Pain/Payment – how big is the pain, how likely are they to pay
- Accessibility – how easy it is for you to reach them
Score them on a scale from 1 to 10, then sum up the results for each customer cluster. The higher the score, the higher the priority to work with that segment.
Score these criteria wisely and get your number one customer cluster!