Why do marketing campaigns have poor conversion rates?  One answer to that question lies in getting to the right target group.  Here’s an idea to think about – get granular on your WIIFM and your conversion rates will dramatically improve.

If you are in marketing, you’ve probably been preached the mantra of WIIFM – ‘what’s in it for me?’ (‘me’ referring to your customer/sales prospect).  Most marketers get this.  You’ve also heard of addressing the WIIFM by talking about your product benefits to your customers versus listing features and functions.  Well, that’s nothing new and marketers get that too.  What then is missing or not working?  The answer lies in how granular you get in finding the WIIFM.

How do you normally do your segmentation analysis?  I speak with technology product marketers all the time and here’s what I find as the basis for most B2B marketing plans and marketing campaigns – segmentation of buyer groups by business size and geographies – just two variables, both of which give very little depth in understanding buyers.  The abstraction is so off the mark, you might as well do your marketing plan without those numbers.  This isn’t granular at all.

Psychographic behavioral segmentation

What’s granular is psychographic behavioral segmentation.  Psychographic behavioral segmentation is segmentation based on attitudes, values, lifestyle and behavior of the target group.  For instance, do all large enterprise buyers behave the same way in adopting a product or service?  How do their interests and opinions differ?  Can those be grouped in distinctive segments?  Do all small businesses have the same attitudes and values in using a product or service?  These are the kind of questions your segmentation sizing and analysis should answer.

A real life illustration

To illustrate how this works, I’ll give you a very simple personal example.  I had a recent project that involved conducting primary research on cloud computing.  I approached about 30 CEOs & CTOs combined, of local technology startups in Austin.  25 of the 30 I approached made themselves available for the project by being generous with their time for half a day.  While my study was about technology executives, narrowing it down to startup executives proved to be the reason for the high conversion rate of 83%.   What separates startup executives from large company executives is curiosity, a willingness to share and learn  – behavioral traits often missing in large company executives.  The startup execs WIIFMs were, in contrast to large company execs, about learning and sharing – a higher purpose.  Ultimately understanding these psychographic behavioral traits proved to be the reason for the high conversion rate in the study.

The next time you prepare your marketing plan or campaign, try something different – see if you can segment your buyer groups based on psychographic behavioral segmentation to get to the true WIIFM.

For original article, click here: Getting granular on WIIFM with psychographic segmentation