What's the best way of segmenting an audience? By...

Question

I'm curious to know which data is most important to you for segmenting the audience you are presenting your product to? Add in the comment section why ;)

Ha Dao · Accepted Answer

I think it depends on your product. For example, if your product is a restaurant, so the answer should be geo location. If it's a dating site, it would be age...so on

Cody B. Gaskin · Answer

Regardless of the product, I believe you should always use a combination of data points. One data point does not give you enough insight on your customer. It will always depend on the product, but more than one data point should be used, especially in the early stages of growth - this helps you zone in on your early adopters to help validate your leanings with the right segmentation and in turn get to product/market fit.

Jana Cagorovic · Answer

@cody_gaskin1 have all data points would be ideal! I agree on that. What's the tools you are using for gathering all of the data points? :)

~ Estate · Answer

Intent is how we segment our audience. Intent explains "why" (whereas interests are "what").

If you were to ask Dorothy, the tin man, the lion, and the scarecrow what they're doing, they will say our interest is to "follow the yellow brick road." But if you dive deeper, they each have a different intent. Dorothy's intent is to go home. Once you understand a segment's intent then you can lead them to the land of Oz.

More concretely:
@estate we implicitly capture intent within our first 140 characters. We do this by using Bayesian techniques (aka probability theory aka machine learning aka artificial intelligence)
@jana_c

Monika Ben · Answer

Email behaviour and product usage are also solid options to consider. How active is the user? What kind of emails do they click?

Patrick Loonstra · Answer

Depends on what want to achieve.

Answer

@jana_c It's still in beta stage but we're gathering a lot of really great initial data to help improve data sets. You can find it here https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/ennie-2

You can use the code INDIE on the form to get a free user persona right now too :)

Answer

I think the answer should actually be all of the above. I'm working on a product right now that gives you data driven user personas factoring in all of those things and more (product lifecycle stage, industry, advertising platform, etc.).

It's one thing to target an audience by interests, but the way you communicate to them is equally as important. If you target the right interests but don't speak their language it will fall on deaf ears.

Felipe Otálora · Answer

I think that it depends, the book The Lean Product Playbook talks about this on detail on CH3, I absolutely recommend you take a look at it. It all comes down to try to identify your customer needs and any additional segmentation is almost incidental.

Alex Devero · Answer

In general, when you are not focused on specific segment, interests are a good place to start. When you are focused on specific segment, then it depends on the type of product you have. Is it physical? Then, geo location and/or demographic will be very like good choices. If it is a digital product, and you have wide spectrum of users, age and/or technographics will work better.

However, it is very hard to say which one is the best way. It is like asking what type of doctor is the best? Well, it depends on your problem.

Abinash Mohanty · Answer

Interest is the best options from the list @jana_c however, sometimes it varies from one product to another. For an example, making a financial product requires to get more insights via demographics as well especially if you're targeting for a global set of users.

Satish Gaire · Answer

As much data points you have the better it is.

You will get their IP then cookie them in to track information.

Jana Cagorovic · Answer

@thomasmalone what's the project you are working on? I would love to check it out. :)

Jana Cagorovic · Answer

@thomasmalone thanks looks interesting! I'll check it out.

Cody B. Gaskin · Answer

@jana_c Yeah, hotjar doesn't catch all the sessions. But it can be overlooked, the goal is to look for patterns which you would only really get with many sessions. Missing one or two a day won't necessarily impact the overall results.

What's the best way of segmenting an audience? By...

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