Understanding Behaviors, Motivations and Intent Is the Missing Piece of the Segmentation Puzzle

 

by Nick Hague

If you’re segmenting your market traditionally, you’re missing a piece of the puzzle.

Firmographics and needs-based segmentation are foundational, but only get you so far.

Firmographics group buyers by characteristics: industry, revenue, company size. But as companies innovate and serve customers beyond their industry, it’s hard to pinpoint any business accurately.

A needs-based approach segments buyers by the problems they’re looking to address. But this fails to factor in any tangible solutions and often results in segments not being actionable.

What’s missing?

Customers’ behaviors, motivations, and intent.

Firmographics help you know your audience. Your customers’ needs describe their current state. Behaviors, motivations, and intent show where they’re going.

Knowing how and why customers act is invaluable. With this data, you can understand and impact their next steps.

It’s similar to our approach at Merkle B2B: a great end-to-end customer experience requires knowing what customers want and how they’ll act to get it.

To understand your market, you need to solve the whole puzzle.

Don’t forget the crucial piece.

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