Online marketing involves segmenting your audience in three phases: pre-click, post-click, and post-conversion. While keyword-based segmentation reigns in the pre-click stage and email list segmentation shines post-conversion, the post-click phase offers form-based landing page segmentation and user-directed segmentation.
User-directed segmentation empowers visitors to define their journey. By offering a few straightforward choices, like “physicians,” “residents,” or “students” in the example below, visitors self-segment, leading to more relevant content tailored to their needs.
This approach allows for personalized messaging, exemplified by the unique content delivered to “physicians,” “residents,” and “students” on their respective offer pages, resulting in higher conversions.
Unlike keyword-based segmentation, user-directed segmentation offers deeper insights:
- Understanding visitor behavior: Analyze click patterns to identify engaged audience segments, conversion rates, and top-performing traffic sources.
- Enhancing message and offer relevancy: Precision targeting through specific messaging maximizes the effectiveness of search and pay-per-click marketing endeavors.
- Boosting conversions: By aligning campaigns with user preferences and understanding segmentation choices, conversion rates are bound to increase.
- Improving lead quality: Optimize messaging for diverse traffic sources and audience segments based on visitor insights, leading to higher-quality leads.
User-directed segmentation can be implemented by considering factors such as:
- Visitor’s problem
- Visitor’s persona (demographic/psychographic)
- Visitor’s buying stage
- Visitor’s organizational role
- Visitor’s geographic location
- Visitor’s industry/company size
- Visitor’s product preferences
Multi-layered landing pages with initial and sub-segmentation options are possible. Marketers determine the structure, while visitor choices reveal the most effective layout for qualified conversions.
Concerns about page abandonment due to clicking are unfounded. In fact, at ion, targeted landing experiences have shown superior performance. Maintaining visitor flow by offering quick, simple segmentation choices is key, while monitoring the segmentation rate (above 60% is ideal) ensures effectiveness.
User-directed segmentation is a powerful tool for optimizing online marketing. Experimenting with various messages, segmentation options, and organizational structures leads to effective media buys, targeted audience capture, efficient lead conversion with relevant fulfillment, and a fully optimized online marketing chain.
Megan Leap, Marketing Manager at ion interactive, a leading provider of advanced landing page software, shared her expertise on user-directed segmentation. With extensive experience in conversion rate optimization and social media marketing, Megan emphasizes high-ROI online marketing strategies when not running marathons across the U.S. You can find her insights on the Post-Click Marketing Blog and connect with her on Twitter: @MeganLeap. (Read more: How to Create the Best Landing Pages for Your Google AdWords Account)