Sam Birkett
Welcome back to part two, where we've been discussing granularity and micro-segmentation. But if you've listened to part one, you'll find that we've started off with a whole load of other related areas about operations and tactics and the strategic choices you have to make around segmentation and segmenting your markets and the audience to the nth degree and, well, I'll stop now and allow you to carry on listening and we hope you find it of interest enjoy. It comes back to that question doesn't it of which segments matter, or what representation matters with your customers? Because I suppose I would say overall, if it was a perfect marketer's world, I would say that I want my brand, my company to have the most highly personalised relationship with every single person out there.

Sally Green
Completely.

Sam Birkett
So you are totally aligned with their needs, wants desires, their relationships, influences upon them, the whole lot and you know, every time you received a message from that brand, then it would be like, Oh, it's like an old friend, they know exactly who I am, what I want, what drives me, they're there for me, you've got all of that. But in order to achieve that, I mean, it's not impossible, but it's almost impossible to do that.

Sally Green
And it gets more and more impossible, the bigger your customer base becomes because you have to... you just haven't got time, if you've got a million customers, right, let's say there are a million repeat customers, you just haven't got time to have that relationship with them. So there are some brands that don't even try. So let's look at this, this is an extreme example, let's say people who buy Smarties. I very much doubt that they just might have a relationship with people who prefer orange Smarties to Blue Smarties, or even that is pushing your luck. Basically, these fast-moving commercial goods, you're just a Smarty eater and that's as close as you're going to get and there are billions of them so it doesn't matter. But if I'm a person who specifically is interested is very niche, load of books that are writing about making your dog into a pineapple, there are some strange books out there, dying your dog pineapple colour, then I can probably get this probably only about 1,000 of us and you might be able to have that really detailed relationship with me. But you've got to recognise it's all about the numbers because you haven't got time to find every orange Smarty lover, you just haven't.

Sam Birkett
Yeah, exactly, and then again, it just comes back to that incredibly practical question doesn't it, about even if we could define all these people well, okay, and then perhaps we even say yes, it might make a difference, because we might be able to get greater customer loyalty from them and make them into better referers and all the rest of it. But I mean, again, would that be the best thing to do in comparison to this? How much would it cost in terms of time, and systems and training and everything else for us to do that, in comparison to doing this other thing over here, which we could actually do to get another million customers who are, you know, just, I suppose... I hate to say standard customers, but you know, our regular segment. So it's all it's those high-up, high-level decisions, isn't it? Saying what is preferable here and then and that's why I think I thought about this a bit, in the beginning, more about sort of the small business as opposed to large business, because it's just pure access to the kind of technology you need to, you know, anybody can get a server and email software online, and they can personalise, you know, so you say, Dear Dave, instead of Dear Customer, you know, yes, we can do that and then we can perhaps even have some systems, which have some dynamic content was dropped into, say, insert here Dave's favourite product.

Sally Green
Exactly, you bought this, you must be interested in this.

Sam Birkett
Exactly. So, you know, the databases are working, and it's feeding in and we get some nice dynamic content. So of course, we try to try to emulate Amazon and sort of surface the stuff we think Dave would like. So we've done that, we've perhaps not... we put in blocks of content, rather than changing our whole message and our whole sort of relationship interaction with him. But we can do that sort of stuff to a certain degree. But of course, the time and the resources we have to really dig deeper and find those insights about the dangers of this world, we can't necessarily do because we just again, we don't have the time, the resource, or the opportunity to do it. So it's almost like an aspiration perhaps for lots of smaller businesses out there. But I think it's almost that's why you have to come back isn't it to this kind of the fundamentals of why and how do we want to do that let's not run before we can walk out and let's let's focus on what's going to hopefully genuinely make a difference to the customers rather than you know, doing it for the sake of doing I think as well.

Sally Green
Yeah, and for your small businesses, it's really important because to be honest, you should you have a different sales and marketing team if your business is big enough to have a separate sales team. Remember that your sales team is segmenting the audience, all of that time, they are going to see Mr Wiggins who buys widgets. But he buys blue widgets and he knows that and he's trying to upsell it into the widget market. But he is thinking, yeah, he's a bit like him. So I'll actually use that person as an example. So the salespeople are actually doing it on the ground all the time out of their heads because it increases their sales return and it might be useful to occasionally get the marketing people to sit down with the salespeople and say, how are you segmenting the people you're selling to? Because maybe we should replicate that online. Maybe some of our campaigns should do that as well and then you can tightly work together, the less effort is for both of you. Because then you at the marketing team are warming up resegmented people that the salespeople tried to sell to. So it's definitely worth talking to each other.

Sam Birkett
Yeah, and I think, again, you've hit on two things, in particular, as the communication talking to each other, as you say, we said before about being aligned, so important and then the whole thing about which I was thinking leads to the idea of testing, actually, so if you're not sure, you know, it's like, again, can you get the best insights internally, or through the data you have available all through, you know, I mean, the worst thing, perhaps is someone who's having a hunch, but perhaps they have, and perhaps they talk to their sales representatives, and they say, Hey, you know, you guys really should be trying to reach out to this, develop this community, this sub-community, I can see them really wanting to do this with us or want that or want this and so they go, Okay, fine, right, let's start the hypothesis then and let's, let's test it, and then, you know, if it comes back over a period of time that actually no, we can't discern any meaningful insight that suggests that is a trend, then at least we've tried, you know, perhaps it really reveals something very different, or it's again, that's why I'm fascinated about the whole subject really, is that whole, is it this that's driving, is it because they are red-headed dog owners? Or is it because actually, all these red-headed dog owners, we found, or the sales team have suggested really do want this new product. It's actually because they live in a much colder part of the country or...

Sally Green
Absolutely, that's really interesting.

Sam Birkett
And that's the real... I think, I'd say that's what is exciting to me about marketing full stop, is just trying to understand the patterns and the psychology a bit around people and the group behaviour. Which leads you on, doesn't it, I think.

Sally Green
Yep. I mean, if you're in the middle of a general election, there's a lot of herd management there. So people like you are voting for this and it's... that as you said, that group behaviour is really powerful and if you've got a product, that's what we were saying before, is it just you that wants to dye your hair the same colour as your dog? Or is there lots of people that do that? And is that gonna make you feel more comfortable? Or are you going to lose your unique thing and you're gonna be cross about it. So you've got to look at these things quite hard and I used to personally, Foyles is a big bookshop in London and it used to be that the owner of Foyles, Lady Foyle used to dye her Afghan hounds the same colour as her hair and sweep through the bookshop with her Afghan hands on leads and she became you know, it was a Lady Foyle thing to do, they all looked at Lady Foyle. She would not have done that if every time she went out the house, everyone had dyed their Afghan hounds pink to match their hair. So you've got to look at what your audience wants, what side of the herd, your audience wants to be.

Sam Birkett
That's interesting. I mean, funnily enough, I went into a Foyles, I believe. But it did taken over from an old Jack Wills store where I'd gone and I recognise, oh my gosh, remember what that was like and I'm getting to complete different subjects here about sort of brand identity and the assets you have around and I remembered because I've been to Waterstone's as well to name check another brand, a bookshop, that was big and crammed for lots of stuff and it had, you know, there's moving like in an old library, moving ladders.

Sally Green
Oh, yes, proper, proper books stuff.

Sam Birkett
Proper book stuff, but it felt like it'd been there a long time and I knew very well, they'd been there less than a year, the actual store but the brand was very well established and so everything they've done, it was just like, ooh, this feels it feels like the kind of bookshop, you want to go in and buy a book and sit down and read it in the shop and it for me, it felt less harsh and really high-quality books. They put on show they're really big, ridiculously expensive, probably books and things like that and they did put my personal favourite PG Woodhouse, they put a whole section of PG Woodhouse, which I've never seen before, an entire floor to ceiling of PG Woodhouse and so they've clearly picked out as an audience segment member like someone like me and you know what I did? I stood there and I took a picture of it. I actually took a picture, it's on my phone. Well, I haven't shared it yet, but I could have been tempted to share it but wow! Other PG Woodhouse lovers, there's this great new shop here and blah, blah, blah and they got that beautifully, right. I think in terms of you know, I mean, that's talking about the whole, you know, storyline and all the rest of it.

Sally Green
That's really interesting, because what they've done is they've highlighted the segment with their products, not just by going, oh this sort of data says they've actually gone, this is the product, which is segmenting the audience. Yeah, that's brilliant. That's a very good description and you might want you might be able to do that with your product. Actually, that's a perfect example. It's not just looking at the audience. It's about looking at who is magnetically attached to which bits of your product.

Sam Birkett
Yeah, exactly and because there's, there's another part of this, I think about the groups that we see out there and the whole thing about, you know, I mean, I know, some sort of passe these days, but people talking about the tribes, what's your tribe? And you know, where do you collect online? Of course, an awful lot of the way hanging out? How do we find people? So if you're starting out with a product, and then going, Okay, well, this product is designed, it's come from a need of, again, let's go back to the handbags, and suppose there's a new kind of like, urban handbag thing, which people need, which is like easily to clip onto your belt, something I don't know. So it's not really a handbag anymore. It's more of a belt bag, or who knows?

Sally Green
It's a man bag.

Sam Birkett
It's a man bag, and you sort of you found these tribes, and this is typically associated with, I don't know, 40-year-old gamers or something, you know, blokes who are gamers, and they need that to have I've know something in that they need.

Three mice in.

Exactly, yeah, they can have that they can have, they can have all sorts of things. But if you're sort of finding the places you say, well, we have an offering here, you know, and we're looking for the watering holes where they are and we can see they have these communities, can you, therefore, launch your brand into those communities, or if you're established already, you sort of you empower your followers and community to say, now you're creating your own mini-segments. So we're feeding you, we're facilitating you to sort of help us segment again for us, and then we can test and see, again, it comes back to the whole, what sort of data do you get from this? And then how much do you, privacy-wise, how do you sort of, you know, treat people like mice in an experiment. The fine line between exploitation and sort of, you know, customer relationship enhancement, isn't it? Yeah, it's all of that. So, but it's interesting, people have done that, I suppose. And obviously, particularly social media as a whole, you know, and influencers and whatnot, as well. But perhaps I'm getting a bit off-topic, I suppose. But...

Sally Green
I think it's really interesting because it also feeds into because a long time ago, when we spoke to Amanda Claesens about market research, one of the things your market research might be is identifying groups of like-minded people. Because market research can do a lot of segmentation for you. I mean, it can do other things, big questions about your products, etc, etc. But quite a lot of it could be about not just identifying the segments, but seeing whether they want to be seen as a segment. Because some of them might think, but yeah, I do, I do want a man bag that I can fit three gaming mice in so that I can just whip them out at any point and play my deathmatch warrior game in moments of stress. But actually, I don't want that to exclude me from also being part of this group over here and so I'm a bit worried now, because you seem to think I'm just over here and actually, I also want to read PG Woodhouse, so you've got to be careful that you don't start excluding people because you've segmented them, you should be able to easily be able to be a member of more than one group.

Sam Birkett
Yeah, I mean, of course, that's a fantastic point you made again, you're on fire today. It's very, I mean, about the whole complexity of people, and the complexity of personas and the data insights you have on them, but to understand well, there are these things that unite them and there are these things that separate people and therefore, what are the differences that matter? And is there an opportunity from a commercial point of view to an opportunity to you know, refer to that difference and look into it and develop sort of a different type of relationship with this group on this particular basis as opposed to other people in other groups and as you say, the complexities, why so important that it personas have a genuine name and that you're trying to think about sort of marketing as a real person. So knowing that yes, I may like certain things on a first half the week and the weekend, I do things very differently or that the week's all about work weekends all about family or Yes, perhaps you're a very sensible kind of as you read PG Woodhouse by the Fireside, with a nice glass of expensive wine, but you know, actually, on a Saturday, you're out there tearing up skateboards or whatever, you know, so you don't follow an absolute, as none of us do, none of us follow exact patterns. But that all comes back again to the data, the insights, what how well, you know, people, and then what are the decisions you make in terms of how you interact with them, really. So, yeah, it's...

Sally Green
I mean, there might well be a very large segment of PG Woodhouse-loving World of Warriors gamers as well, they might be a huge... they might have a huge subsection of conversations. But you need to make sure that you don't make sure that they're forced into being that you want to force PG Woodhouse lovers to play computer games to get the best out of your product because that can happen to like I get to be honest, when Amazon brought in, you bought this, you might like this, a little bit was thinking the trouble is I don't like that. I've read that and I didn't like it at all. So now I don't trust you and it does really interesting things. If you get to the level of saying, I think you'll like this or you'll do this, that's quite... it can get shaky ground on how much your customers trust you.

Sam Birkett
And again, that is the word isn't it, trust. I mean, because I just thinking about the whole way, the way, you know, we can see as the next 5 years, 10 years going in terms of there's going to be there has been more and more data created, perhaps with more data comes fewer insights and ideally, if you got more data, you want to draw more meaningful insights. But that's the challenge of seeing into the future for marketers, isn't it? It's how do you maintain trust, because I can see a trend again, this is my personal observation of the world. But certainly in the UK and in the West, I would say in particular, there seem to be people are less trusting of these big brands, particularly digital brands, they don't like the idea of being, because they know people can segment them with all sorts of algorithms and everything else. People want to be seen as individuals. So the challenge for the marketers and the technology guys, the digital guys out there is like, well, how can you make someone, allow them, you know, to trust you, and enable you to actually understand enough about them. So you're relevant, without tipping the balance too far into, as you say, wow, there's these things these people don't want to feel that they exploited in a sort of commercial sense. So again, I mean, again, all these conversations always to me come back to how can you replicate in a way which is done with adequate resources that that you have for the time you have available and the budget you have available and the teams you have available? How can you take all of those inputs and turn them into a relationship with your customer, which is one based on mutual respect and trust? So that's what they feel is you know, you're adding value to them. That's the ultimate challenge.

Sally Green
That's exactly right. No, you're exactly right, you've been saying all the way through that you've got to look at your data with care. You can't just say, oh, because the data says 20 people are doing this, I'm going to treat them all the same. It can become a really dangerous little tipping point where you as you absolutely said you lose them.

Sam Birkett
Yeah, yeah and it's so, I mean, I guess you can see how we've talked about in the past, how you have super-duper, amazing programmes that can do all sorts of analysis that can do huge amount and it's funny how, when I'm gonna be doing a bit of training of this in terms of metrics and meaningful metrics, again, and just sort of saying, you know, how I mean, and that is, the challenge is having something that's a well-oiled machine that has, you know, some automated functionality to it, and the whole introduction of AI and all of this business going on, and machine learning, we've got all of that stuff going on. But I mean, unless you put the right, set the correct calibration and the right inputs at the beginning, you could very quickly, it can run away, and you end up getting something that doesn't achieve its initial goal that say, you know, this amazing programme can understand your audiences far better than you've ever had, and it can do incredible granularity and then everyone goes, no, we don't like granularity, actually. I mean, I just like to be, you know, you're just sending me a chocolate bar or something or Smarties, that's all you need, I like the taste. There you go. I mean, that's an extreme example but it's that thing, isn't it, just saying what is important, particularly when you're starting out or you're a medium-sized business, who's going right to the next stage, and investing in our marketing, this should influence your thinking, what to do shouldn't it really.

Sally Green
Exactly, but authorising it. I mean, it's really interesting, because you could set up wonderful email campaigns, which are just targeted to certain number of people and they've had perfect landing pages, they've got perfect customer journeys tracked out, it's all going tremendously well and it's funnelling hundreds of leads into your CRM, and absolutely none of them are being authorised by the sales department, because they're all wrong. So yes, you've done it all very carefully and it's all been automated and you think you've absolutely segmented it perfectly and when all the leads have arrived in the sales departments, because you've authorised them by the sales, they've gone no wrong, wrong, not right, not part of the group and you think that's when the can't doesn't measure. You have to measure it all the way down, and you've absolutely got the customer.

Sam Birkett
Yeah, exactly, exactly and then when you've got to that point of then having the customers for it, that's when you're far more likely to get more information, more feedback, more meaningful understanding about the business as well. So, gosh, I feel we've kind of gone looking at, you know, sort of granularity and segments and managed to sort of take it into lots of other interconnected areas, which is where it should be really.

Sally Green
When we started this, we thought we weren't going to have enough to say, and here we are! Gosh, it's much more complicated than we ever thought!

Sam Birkett
It is, but there's also I do feel a sort of good sense of, in my mind, anyway, of kind of joins lots of dots together and I think it's hopefully that, you know, people can understand there's that kind of as we're saying, there's a complexity about whether you're gonna do something or not. There's technology involved. There's the people involved, as the budget processes, all of these things that need to line up to enable you to do these things and actually, yes, if you are going to, say, the ideal goal of going towards, you know, as targeted as meaningful relationships you can possibly have with every single customer, there are bumps on the road, and there are lots of decisions to be made to get there. But yeah, hopefully we've summed up all those today.

Sally Green
And I think you've been saying all the way through that one size does not fit all. So don't think this is how to do it because it how this company does, it won't be the same as how your company does it. So it's a completely unique experience every time.

Sam Birkett
Exactly, exactly and that's why it's so important, as you say, to see where you are, what you're selling, and your lifecycle, all the rest of it. It's so important to keep that in mind. But gosh, I think well, I'm interested to know if anybody out there has any other different thoughts or opinions on this.

Sally Green
Or your experience of segmenting your audience, did it work? Was it worthwhile? Did you have any hiccups? Did it put anybody off? Etc. It'd be really interesting to know.

Sam Birkett
Yeah, that will be great. I share an example of you know, perhaps you went into an organisation and, and they said, Yeah, well, we know our audience they're this, it's one segment. That's it. And you said oh hang on a minute, let's look at some data and there are these two groups and then he worked together and all of a sudden, you've got some fantastic results, perhaps that'd be great. So yes, don't feel shy about coming forward, or join in with examples, you know, examples of where you've seen this happen? Perhaps not personally, but you've seen it elsewhere. That'd be great. Yes, we'd love to hear from you. Wouldn't we?

Sally Green
We absolutely would, like we always do. We're always interested what you have to say, because we waffle on for an hour and actually, we want to know what you're thinking too.

Sam Birkett
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. No, that'd be great, actually, so well, thank you. I enjoyed that Sally.

Thank you very much. Thank you.

So you can find us on the email meanderspod@gmail.com, or you can find us on Facebook and Twitter and also LinkedIn. LinkedIn is where we're gonna be publishing some more articles and things I think soon. So if you look up either me or Sally individually, then you'll see lots there. So yeah, get in touch meandering around.

Sally Green
And tell all your friends listen to this. If anyone you think might be interested, tell them you can find us everywhere. Every kind of podcast player, Marketing Meanders, just pop it in and there we pop out again.

Sam Birkett
All our 100+ episodes will be available to you so...

Sally Green
Absolutely, you can listen to us for months!

Sam Birkett
All the best. Thank you very much.

Sally Green
Okay. Bye, everyone.

Sam Birkett
Bye for now.