Audience segmentation: what is it and how to do it right?

Greetings from AffHub! Today we’re going to talk about audience segmentation and understand why it is so essential for affiliate marketers. 

Segmentation is an arrow that will show you where to direct traffic to reduce costs and increase ROI.

What is audience segmentation?

In simple terms, segmentation is the division of the audience into groups by certain categories, which makes advertising much more effective.

This point is crucial, as it helps to direct traffic to those who will definitely be interested in a particular offer. 

Types of segmentation

🌏 Geographic 

In this case, we divide the audience by country, region, and city. For example, we have a travel offer that will be relevant in Ukraine, but not so relevant in Turkey.

👥 Demographic

Breakdown by age, gender, education, income level, etc. For example, an offer for online Pilates training is clearly more suitable for women aged 18-45 than for men aged 40+, who would rather prefer strength training.

🧠 Interests 

Here we consider the type of activity, hobbies, etc. If a person is interested in health and beauty, we can already guess that they might be interested in an offer about care cosmetics or makeup courses.

💻 Behavioral

In this case, we track a person’s online activity. For example, the search history in the browser, purchase history, social media activity, etc. That’s why a funny story often happens, which may even scare some people – you googled a new iPhone once and now all your recommendations are filled with those apples. But it’s okay, it’s just the work of Internet algorithms that help to make time you spend in social media more useful and relevant.

So why does the web need to segment its audience?

It’s all about more revenue and lower costs.

If a web has properly studied its target audience and directed traffic in the right direction, it doesn’t lose anything, but rather gets the desired result. But if this genius randomly merged everything, hoping for luck, then bad news… most likely, he didn’t do a good job 🥲.

Here is the answer to this “why”:

Lower cost per lead

If you show ads only to those users who may be interested in your offer, the price per lead will be much lower.

Increased conversion rate 

Adaptation of creatives to the interests and pain points of users. For example, let’s say we came across a flock of applicants who really want to pass the exams, but believe that they are not ready enough. So, if the creative emphasizes the entire math program in a month, the ad will work better. Here, future students will believe that without studying math for several years, they will become Pythagoras in a month.

Increase ROI

Everything is simple here. ROI will increase with increased revenue and reduced costs. And if you want to kill conversions, then you need to drain the budget on the audience that is not suitable at all 😌.

Less time for optimization. 

You can immediately see whether a particular group is working, and therefore optimize your ads much faster.

How and at what stages do we conduct segmentation?

Segmentation is necessary at all stages of development. Before launch, during tests, and after them. 

First, you have to choose whom you are going to target. To do this, you need to fulfill the following points

• Analyze the offer, i.e. answer the questions “What?” and “For whom?”.
• Study your competitors. Who do they target?
• Gather information about your audience. What platforms do they visit most often? What are their interests and activities? What is their approximate location? 

Now that you’ve figured it out, you can start segmenting 🧐.

Initially, segmentation takes place at the testing stage. It is important to check the options and choose the most successful one.

• Divide the audience into groups and run several split tests.
• The next step is to check the GEO. It often happens that in one country, the indicators for different regions will differ significantly.
• And what about testing creatives? Someone will be better served by something bright and light, while someone will prefer a more serious picture and a clear message.

We come to the last part of this chain. And this is post-launch segmentation.

Say hello to analytics. Many people don’t like this point, but without it, you won’t be able to understand whether the offer has been accepted, whether impressions are growing, etc.

• Pay attention to the evaluation of such metrics as CTR, CPC, and CPL. If the CTR is low, it may indicate that the creative or targeting is off. If the CTR is high but there are no regs, then you most likely have a low-quality audience. 
• Use this data for optimization. Say goodbye to what doesn’t work and scale up what does. 
• Do retargeting: show ads again to people who have already seen them but did not perform the desired action.

Mistakes in audience segmentation

Often, when performing segmentation, mistakes can occur that can ruin a lot of things. Before you know it, you’ve wasted all your budget, time, and mental health.

🚩 Very wide audience

Someone thinks: the bigger the better. But definitely not in this case. It’s important for us to choose the categories of people closest to our offer, and not to try to reach more people and get nothing in the end.

That’s why we talked about the importance of segmentation by age, gender, education, behavior, interests, etc. Making a lot of small targets will certainly take you more time, but it will definitely be more effective.

🚩 You’re skipping tests

How are you going to know what flies and what doesn’t if you say to yourself: “Hey, it’s all clear, let’s just skip these tests.”  You just risk losing money, that’s all.

🚩 Dealing with seasonality and trends

For example, during the New Year holidays, you start advertising swimwear and air mattresses. Do you think this ad will be successful? It’s unlikely.

That’s why it’s important to keep track of seasonality and what people choose most often and when. 

🚩 Underestimation of analytics

Trackers and analytics should be your best friends when working with segmentation. This is the only way to understand which segment is the best.

To summarize.

Audience segmentation is more than just a marketing gimmick. It is a real guide for affiliate marketers. The success of an advertising campaign is often not based on magic but on competent analysis: find out who your audience is, where they are, what their interests are, and how they behave online. Don’t forget about the importance of testing, tracking, and analyzing – and even the most unexpected offer will find its buyer. In the age of data, the winner is the one who understands their target audience better, not just the one who is more creative.