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Criteria Necessary For A Market Segment Improves Marketing

By: Linda P. Morton
 

The criteria necessary for a market segment reveals what you need to know about your target market in order to develop a successful marketing campaign.

Effective marketing caters to your best potential customers - your target market.

You need to know who your best potential customers are and the market segments that they belong to. This knowledge enhances your ability to use marketing methods and messages that appeal to your potential customers.

Wikipedia lists five criteria necessary for a market segment:

First Criteria Necessary For A Market Segment: People In The Market Segment Share Similar Characteristics

Second Criteria Necessary For A Market Segment: People In The Market Segment Have Different Characteristics Than The Mass Market

Third Criteria Necessary For A Market Segment: Ability To Identify And Count Market Segment Members

Fourth Criteria Necessary For A Market Segment: The People In The Market Segment Can Be Reached And Persuaded To Take Action

Fifth Criteria Necessary For A Market Segments: Ability To Make A Profit

Understanding all five criteria necessary for a market segment will make your marketing more successful. The first two are covered in this article. You can get information about the other three at my blog.

First Criteria Necessary For A Market Segment: Commonality Of People In The Market Segment

Homogeneity refers to a sameness or similarity of members within a market segment.

To illustrate, people differ by education levels. People who have completed a college degree share many similar characteristics. People who only have a high school diploma share characteristics. But the characteristics for one education level are very different from those of the other. Marketing designed to sell to both groups will be far less effective than marketing designed to target just one.

The best market segments are the ones in which people share many of the same characteristics.

When people are similar, they are more likely to want and need the same products and services. When they share many characteristics, it's easier to design a marketing campaign that builds on their common needs.

Second Criteria Necessary For A Market Segment: Differences Between People In The Market Segment And Other People

Being able to distinguish how the people in a market segment differ from everybody else is an important market segment criteria.

Market segment members must be different in some significant way from others in the mass market. Without significant differences, you have:

No way to separate the market segment from the rest of the mass market,

No purpose to target the market segment with a marketing campaign, and

No rationale for creating a marketing program.

If there are no important differences between people in different segments, there is no foundation for target marketing. So having segments differ from one another is another criteria necessary for a market segment.

Thus, each market segment requires different marketing strategies and tactics than others in the mass market.

Criteria Necessary For A Market Segment: Summary With More Access

If you identify a market segment in which the people have lots in common, but are quite different from people in other market segments, you have the beginning of a successful marketing campaign.

Even if the people in a segment do share similar characteristics and those characteristics differ from those in other segments, you still need three more criteria for a market segment. (1) There needs to be enough people in the segment (2) to make marketing to them worthwhile. And (3) they must be the type of people who will take your desired actions.

Article Source: Main Articles

Learn more about Criteria for a Market Segment.Also get a report on Market Segmentation there or free ebook Marketing Your Small Business

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