'Customer segmentation helps brands to be present at the right time, at the right place'

Knowing your customer is the key to success for any brand, and brands today have an unprecedented insight into their consumers. However, how does this data deluge help brands target their audience better and focus on consumers who may not have uniform needs? The first panel session of the India Brand Conclave deliberated on the topic ‘Has Marketing Changed from ‘Knowing your Customer’ to ‘Knowing your Customer Segment’?’

The session, chaired by Preetha Athrey, Head – Marketing, Twitter India, boasted an eclectic panel of industry experts comprising Deepti Sampat, Vice President Marketing & Ancillary, Vistara; Kunal Bhardwaj, Senior Director - Marketing, UpStox; Maninder Bali, Head of Brand Marketing, Vedantu; Rohit Dosi, Director - MSA Business, InMobi, and Vishal Sharma, Head of Marketing, Sleepwell.

The past two years have been quite challenging, as a transformation in customer behaviour can be seen. And we had to adapt to fulfill their ever-changing requirements. Everyone around us is a customer of some kind of product. 

The discussion kick-started with Athrey asking the panellists to narrate how they have looked at customer segmentation, how they are reaching out to their customers and what the future looks like. Sharma expressed his viewpoint, said, “Customer segmentation is very important as it helps you identify the right cohorts of your audiences, customise your messaging or build the right narrative to those cohorts. Ultimately, it gives you a better return on money. For example, we quickly identify customers between active, non-active, competition and non-buyer. And then you can decide on what kind of effort that goes into marketing to address those segments.”

Bhardwaj added, “The world of brands and consumers now is pretty much similar to a modern retail outlet that we walk into. For a particular product, customers will see 100 brands and it is up to them to walk in and figure out what they want. Even in our category, we need to look beyond different kinds of product segments and direct consumers, and look beyond what their needs are to what they really want. So, of course, customer segmentation, understanding their needs and then delivering to them what they don’t really know but want at a certain point of time is the game.”

Speaking of how he has perceived the shift to customer segmentation, Dosi elaborated, “Customer segmentation is extremely important in the times that we are today. The behaviour of consumers is changing a lot. I think their user preferences and behaviour online have drastically evolved. And all brands out there today are dealing with a digital-first target audience with extremely unique needs. Now in order to successfully build brand connect, first of all, you need to identify the needs of your users and then map your offerings to the right consumers. And in order to do this, that is where your customer segmentation becomes extremely crucial. Customer segmentation helps brands to be present at the right time and at the right place.”

Sampat touched upon a crucial aspect of the discussion - customer segmentation versus market segmentation. “As far as aviation is concerned, market segmentation is extremely important for us because we are looking at going to new markets, new destinations, etc and studying those in terms of demand and in terms of the existing product there. So, for example, if we are going international – what kind of product [read aircraft] is there, what kind of experience is already there. Of course, there is product parity, and hence comes what kind of segmentation do you want to go after? So when we look at customer segmentation, there are two or three cohorts that we go after because you cannot talk to everybody and looking at the space that we are in, which is slightly premium service that we provide, we look at which customer is price-sensitive and which segment is probably a little bit more wanting to experience and explore a new product.” She added, “What is happening in terms of market segmentation and customer segmentation…in that space in terms of customer behaviour – the kind of service or the kind of product that we offer them differs.”

“I am going to come at it from the other end,” chipped in Bali. “Because we are sitting on such an enormous amount of data, we really have to split hairs on how deep you can go with the segmentation. The question that we find useful is asking ourselves at what point do we stop. Internally at Vedantu, all of us are very mindful of what we don’t want to be doing as we don't want to boil the ocean for a cup of tea."

As Sharma said, the ROI on segmentation has to be greater than the expense of doing this entire exercise on segmentation. And for us, it plays out in many meaningful ways – there are no assumptions made. For example, when you are teaching a kid from thousands of miles away, you can have different models at play. You can have a one-to-one model or a one-to-few model or a one-to-many model. Now, if you don’t get your segmentation right, you don’t know which model to apply."