Segmented Acquisition Vs’ Relevant Relationship Building

April 14, 2009 | By Marc Porcelli | No Comments »

There are numerous strategies that can be implemented to acquire new users online. Some organizations will choose to acquire through segmentation, which is more traditional. Others will acquire through building relevant products that consumers are interested in and therefore select.

Traditional segmentation is based on such factors as demographics, location, sex, behavior, etc. This is a highly effective way to acquire new users online and I definitely recommend it.  Once you specifically segment users to specified landing pages and specific conversion funnels, it is highly affective and cost-efficient.

Relevant relationship building allows, or rather enables, consumers to target their own choices and preferences. Michael Fassnacht recently wrote a great article in AdvertisingAge called, The Death of Consumer Segmentation? In the article, Fassnacht describes how “Apple and Amazon are not masters of consumer segmentation, but experts in building relevant products that consumers choose”.  Imagine building relevant products that consumers chose instead of constantly telling them what to choose. This is a very powerful way to market, yet it is highly under-utilized.

Instead of acquiring users solely through segmentation, we can build on this and offer consumers a choice. To offer consumers this choice, they of course need to be enabled to choose. Fassnacht notes examples such as  Facebook, MySpace and Google who, “Are far more focused on building and communicating relevance relationships than in micro-segmenting consumers.” Facebook allows user to choose and be chosen to interact with others as friends. This consumer choice is engaging and highly relevant to the end user.

So why don’t advertisers commonly enable users to choose what they want? There are multiple reasons, but here are a few common ones:

  • Advertisers want control, they fear that if too much choice is given, it will threaten their current business model – they are risk-averse.
  • “If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.” While I sympathize with this, it never hurts to test. Imagine what you could be leaving on the table by not even trying! Weigh the pro’s and con’s, solicit feedback from your staff and trusted business associates, and go from there. Test, test, test!
  • Resources are often scarce. Having to scope, implement and then test – all while supporting the current line of business can be very difficult.
  • Technological limitations cannot support the proposed change. There can be a variety of reasons technically that can be exceptionally costly or simply not feasible. As marketers, we often tend to forget this.

If one of these points rings a bell, you are not alone. The challenge is to get past this, and to mature your business. Consumers want choice and clearly flock to sites that offer and enable having choices. Segmentation will always be important. Taking segmentation to the next level through relevant relationship building can be a highly affective way to build and comliment your business.

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Category: Marketing Strategy, Mergers And Acquisitions, Monitization, Optimization

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