Digital Marketing Segmentation | Audience Attributes

When it comes to segmentation – whatever be your audience – attributes are a key way of gaining a better understanding your target. Attributes are nothing but quantifiable characteristics and provide a way for marketers to understand the needs and motivations behind audience behavior.

Attributes can broadly be classified under the following buckets:

Personal attributes – What people are

These are attributes that tell us what people really are. They mostly pertain to demographic data like age, gender, household income, marital status etc. A secondary level of attributes may indicate life-stages as well. Things like graduation, wedding day, birth of child etc can indicate the current shift in personal attributes and may have repercussions on choice of product/services.

Behavioral attributes – What people do

Behavioral attributes are mostly observed. What media does the target audience consume most? What kinds of products do they typically buy? What online sources of information are consulted? What kind of content is most consumed on social media channels? This gives us very usable information on where they are and what they do while they are there. Marketers can use this information to create compelling content to cater to audience requirements.

Attitudinal attributes – What people think

Attitudinal attributes comes in two distinct types. Some are explicit when people clearly know what they think and feel about a topic. However, human being being what they are, some others are rather implicit. People may often not realize what they feel about a particular topic till they are confronted with a specific situation. In such cases, the attitudinal attributes have to be inferred from available data.

Once these different attributes have been gathered and analyzed, they can be applied to segments. When customer segments are mapped to needs/values clustering, insights will begin to emerge. This helps marketers identify things like the right price point, the ideal segment to target, the most compelling message, the most valuable customer, the trigger for behavioral change, the way to pitch product information etc. This informs the creative process which leads to better conversions and hence sales.