stevenclark.com.au

Segmentation is a simple concept. Let’s say you’re in a room with 1000 strangers – it’s a conference – and you want to find employment as a front end interface designer. You have the skills and the experience to do the job but you lack the connection to an employer.

Example: 1000 people in a Room

I like to call those 1000 people ‘the Pie’ – in the context of this example they are everybody in your ‘problem universe’. Let’s say that each person has on their chest a short list of things about themselves including name, age, company, job title, short description, employing / not employing (if so, then also open position). Its too expensive to shake every single person’s hand in a day.

So you walk around identifying a segment (a niche). You only want to talk to the people (name) with authority (job title) who work for (companies) and are employing interface designers (open position). You don’t want to talk to people who aren’t employing, people who are freelancers, or people who are lowly designers because they would chew up your valuable time.

It’s not that hard to imagine that you have identified a slice of ‘the Pie’ that you want to meet and shake hands with and pitch for their job vacancies. And segmentation is just that – ignore the rest of ‘the Pie’ and deal with the piece of ‘the Pie’ that you’re interested in shaking hands with…

6 Billion People in the World

Transpose that over to your business and my (probably too long) article about Freelance Web Designers: Who is your Customer? Boring stuff, right? I get where you’re coming from so this is the 101 version of that post.

You’re in a world with 6 billion people. As a freelancer it is too expensive in time and resources to shake everybody’s hand and ask if they need a web designer (you). But that’s how most freelancers are operating – one message to everybody of ‘Hire Me’. One broad hand trying to please everybody… so they get a dribble of work here and a bit there and they sustain if they’re lucky. One customer is an architect, one is an environmental consultant, a real estate agent, a bank and so forth.

Not only do they have to talk ‘architect’ and ‘real estate’ and ‘bank’ but they are operating in a world where the customers are so different they definitely don’t talk to each other.

Segmentation of ‘the [6 Billion People] Pie’

Find your slice of ‘the Pie’. Let’s say your research tells you that nobody is serving the potentially lucrative niche (slice of ‘the Pie’) for accounting consultants. They are a group with money, they could benefit from web solutions… and they are a homogenous identifiable group. So you learn everything you can about these consultants – location, description, income, interests, aspirations and motivations.

It’s cheaper to talk to this group… it takes less time… it takes less effort… you get to know their jargon and their customers and their strengths and weaknesses. That means you get insight into their business and that, my friends, translates to your ability to serve their real needs – not just building any old website.

And all of that will give you competitive advantage… which leads to above average returns on your income.

Like I said, stop trying to serve everybody out there – find a niche… make it happen.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 18th, 2010 at 11:31 am and is filed under business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.