Customer segmentation for entrepreneurs is a tool to reduce distractions, focus your product roadmap towards your Minimum Viable product and create personas that can help your marketing, sales and development efforts.
I am often asked 3 questions associated with customer segments, which I thought I’d address in this post. I am going to use an example of a company building a new age mobile Patient Records Management solution (or EMR – Electronic Medical Records) for the tablet as an example.
1. What are the steps to a good segmentation strategy?
The first thing you need to do to ensure a good segmentation approach is to write down your ideal customer attributes. You dont need any framework to do this, just a list of attributes will suffice. Your attributes need to be specific, numerical and descriptive.
(I) Specific means, you will have to outline their environment. What are they using currently? How specific is their problem? Do they have alternatives? If your target is doctors in our above example,. that’s too large a segment. Instead there are different types of doctors:
a) Those that practice independently vs. those that are attached to a hospital
b) Those that are general physicians vs. those that are specialists.
c) Those that see < 10 patients a day vs. those that see more, etc.
(II) Numerical means there has to be a set number of customers that fall into this segment. It has to be a number much less than your entire target market, and not more than 2.5% of 2.5% of your target market. Why 2.5% of 2.5%? That’s usually the second question.
(III) Descriptive means, you have to outline their current day-in-the-life scenario without your product. Explain how they are currently solving the problem (if it does exist) and how they are solving it without your product. It cannot be that they are not solving it. They may be used pen and paper to keep medical records, but a system does exist.
2. How many customers is enough to build a segment for? Is there a minimum number?
Innovators – theory of diffusion
According to the theory of diffusion, we have 2.5% of customers who are innovators. These are your earliest of early customers and your initial targets. What I have found with most of the startups I am helping is that 2.5% of those innovators are truly the engaged, early influencers who will be willing to have the discretionary time and budget to try truly innovative products and then be willing to evangelize them to the rest of the innovators.
To be clear, you dont need all of the 312 to be your early customers. These are your early segment of potential customers. Typically 10% of them being early customers tends to show “traction” for an investor.
Lets say the total number of doctors in the US is 500K. Then your Innovators are 12.5K. Of them, 2.5% should be the first segment, which is about 312. That’s the ideal target for you to have as a start.
3. What if most of the target customers dont have the pain point or dont want the product? Does that mean the segment is incorrect or there is no market need for this segment?
If you have targeted 312 doctors who are primary physicians (segment by practice type), in the Texas area (segment by location) who work in a multi-use work location (segment by work area) and are currently using paper based medical records (segment by current product usage) theny you now have a segment of customers who you want to go after.
Google Adwords Segments
A trick that I have seen most people use is to segment based on Google Adwords segments (see diagram above) or segment by Facebook targeting options.
Facebook Targeting Options
Once you have your segment at 2.5% of 2.5%, then you are doing a combination of ads, conversions, focus groups and interviews to understand if they have the pain point.
If you end up finding out that customers dont have the pain point or the conversion rates on your ads is low it is indicative of either poor targeting, poor messaging (your message did not resonate), incorrect framing of the problem or lack of the problem in the first place.
What I have found in my experience with over 300 startups is that the number one problem is poor targeting, followed by lack of the problem existing for the prospect in the first place.
