Market segmentation

Positioning is an important aspect

Positioning is so important that, if this stage is skipped, all other efforts of promotion of the product could be ruined. Good positioning should be short, clear, and understandable. Therefore, it is often described in one sentence or is made to fit in a tweet. Positioning should be directly related to the main problem that the product will solve for the users.

The difficulty is that many a-times, the product generally solves various problems for different users. For example, an online accounting system providing the same capabilities solves different problems for the entrepreneur and accountant. As to the question «Who are you?», different answers may be given, depending on who is posing the question. Positioning is closely related to the target audience segmentation. Often, I have heard startups saying that their product is made for all users of the Internet, or something like that, which is definitely an outlandish type of segmentation.

Begin to break your users into segments. Try implementing any different characteristics like gender, age, income level, interests, etc. The task to break all users into segments is performed in such a way that all were uniform within a single segment. That is, from the perspective of the product, all users of one segment are like twins and are indistinguishable to a significant extent.

Take one segment user and tell him about the product. Then afterward, take any other user of the same segment, and their stories about the product should be similar. Begin to divide users from the largest to smallest. Specify what problem your product solves for each segment. If more than one problem is obtained from a single segment, the segment shall be divided into further sub-segments.

As a result, you should get:

1. The segment and its characteristics (feature set)
2. The problem is solved by the users of that segment
3. Positioning for this segment. In this case, the product can be position in a single sentence.

From this scheme, you automatically get ready-made advertising campaigns for Yandex, VKontakte, Google, Twitter. And you can understand where to look for leads and what attraction channels to use based on segment performance. By looking at the segments tree, you can go in the opposite direction, summarize a number of problems, and get the main product positioning. And a detailed list will be a good start for the development of the Landing page.

Take, for example, the development of websites, the likes of ‘heavily worked-on websites, will soon be performed using innate abilities.

For whom?

1. For all the sites which may need this? — Well, yes.
2. For business? — Yeah right!
3. For business owners that have heard something about the Internet, interested in finding customers? — Getting Warmer
4. Does this business have a site?
5. Is this a recently established business?
6. Volumes (for example, how many employees)
7. Lines of business

Eventually, we obtain a segment such as the following:

1. Recently established company (6-12 months old)
2. with a small staff (10-20 people).
3. Recently launched, no site at the moment hasn’t met targets as yet, and the like,
4. are not willing to devote a lot of money on the development of the site
5. On the question of whether or not a site is needed, the most likely answer is, «Well, of course, it is needed»
6. Does not plan to actively attract customers via the Internet.

The situation is one of those «websites needed, well so that we owned one.» The problem is that this is not represented on the Internet Positioning: «We are setting up a website for business start-ups on the Internet for 1 week and for so many rubles.» This is not ideal, but the point is clear. Offering affordable, or perhaps typical or conventional solutions, Landing pages, with minimal customization, cheap but good and fast. It is worth noting that in the site-building world, young companies just need to be positioned and well-niched. Sites solve many problems and are needed for numerous problems to be solved, so cramming the site under a one-size-fits-all does not work.

So, in summary:

1. Divide your customers into segments as per the problems that your product solves. The better the homogeneity of the segment, the better the result (but without fanaticism)

2. Check № 1 — segment should easily explain what you have to offer. Without any "and"s and "or"s.

3. Checking № 2 — product positioning for the segment, tagline, the main message, are all to be contained within the tweet.

4. Segmentation and positioning are closely linked. One may be used to create the others, and vice versa.

5. Segmentation and positioning give insight into what customers to look for, how to look, where to look for them, and what particular offer to give them. You can write a statement for Sales.

6. Structuring allows you to identify the main problems to be solved by the product, and a host of other artifacts that can be used, for example, for setting up a Landing page.