One piece of advice you’ll hear a lot in the world of marketing is “find your niche.” Everyone knows good marketing is all about narrowing your focus to a specific audience and crafting the perfect messaging to resonate with them.

But marketing is full of fun contradictions, and here’s one of them: once you get really good at working with your niche, that audience can pretty much explode with growth. And once that happens, it gets a little harder to create those perfect messages!

That’s where market segmentation comes in. With segmentation, you can focus your marketing efforts to cater to your audience’s whims—making it a key tool to have in your wheelhouse. Here’s how it works.

¿What Is Market Segmentation?

First off, let’s start by getting into what segmentation means. Basically, market segmentation happens when you divide your target audience into smaller groups according to certain characteristics you choose. These characteristics can vary, but in general, you’ll find that you use the same types of specifics you considered when you designed your niche:

• Age range
• Gender
• Income level
• Education
• Location
• Interests and hobbies
• Problems

Essentially, you can think of it as separating your audience into multiple niches, which you can then market with specific, tailored messages they’ve come to know and love!

¿Why Is Market Segmentation So Important?

In today’s fast-paced digital world, where we’re generating 2.5 quintillion bytes of data each day—it’s easy for your message to get lost in the crowd, which makes it hard to generate new leads.

Even worse, it’s easy for you to lose the followers you do have, with messages that don’t resonate. The broader your audience, the harder it is to meet every member’s preferences, opinions, and needs.

With segmentation, you can break down an overwhelming audience size into manageable chunks you can market to. And with better marketing strategies, comes increased growth and a better ROI for your work overall. Plus—and this is most important—market segmentation gives you the chance to prove to your followers that you actually know who they are as a person. Everyone loves a brand whose communication seems to speak to them directly, and segmentation is what lets you make that magic happen for your customers and leads.

At the end of the day, with market segmentation, you can:

• Create strong messages that resonate
• Identify the marketing strategies that will work for each segment
• Design hyper-targeted ad campaigns
• Generate and convert quality leads
• Set your brand apart from the competition
• Create and encourage loyal fans and followers

The bottom line? If you aren’t harnessing the magic of market segmentation, you’re really missing out! To stay focused—and to stay relevant—it’s more important than ever to be in touch with your audience, right where they are.

That said, if you’re struggling to market your business, you’re definitely not alone! I get it: knowing how to market (and how to help your team market) can be tough. That’s why I’m inviting you to work with me and build your in-house marketing department with a little help! Check it out, and see if my session is right for you.

Lara Schmoisman, CEO & Founder of The Darl and Marketing Simplificado