National Get to Know Your Customers Day

One of the key elements of marketing is to get to know your customers down to a T. By this, we don’t mean understanding Lisa’s routine, and Sarah’s children’s names. But by gaining a deep understanding about your groups, or segments, of clients. What are their values? What are their pain points? And what can you do to help them with these? In this blog, we will help you understand how to create your customer segments. We will also help with how best to speak, and target these groups.

What is a segment?

A market segment is a group of people who share one or more common characteristics. These groups are lumped together for marketing purposes. The characteristics can be passions, interests, or challenges. However, ultimately they are things that can be related to your business. This helps you get to know your customers on a much more successful basis. What's more, this allows you to communicate more relevantly with clients about things that they are genuinely interested in.

How do you work out what a segment of clients is?

There are multiple ways that you can establish different segments of customers:

• What products or services do they purchase from you?
• What is their gender?
• How regularly do they visit your premises?
• What age group do they fall into?
• How can you communicate with these clients?
• What times of day do they come and visit your salon?
• How much money do your clients typically spend with you?
• What pain points or challenges do your clients face that your salon can help with?

By asking these questions, you will be able to create multiple different segments of customers depending on what they purchase from you, how regularly they visit, how much disposable income they typically will spend with you, and what difficulties they have that your salon can help them with. Ultimately this helps you get to know your customers and their segments better. Not only does this mean that you have a deeper understanding of ultimately WHY your clients are visiting you, but it also provides you with answers as to how to communicate with them effectively. Don’t forget, that some clients can fall into more than one segment, such as:

• Sunbed users
• Those who visit you for manicures
• Clients who visit twice per week
• Those who purchase lotion sachets versus bottles
• Clients who visit your salon on their work lunch break

One person can fit into all of these segments, and so communication for all elements relevant to these options would work for them, however, emailing them about evening sessions would not be relevant for them.

Example:

Do those who come in solely for sunbeds want to hear about an offer you are running about having their nails done? Maybe not. But instead, you can also provide these clients with relevant offers, promotions, and information that will make them more likely to visit your business again more frequently or provide them with information about a service they don’t currently purchase, explaining why this could be of interest for them. Personalising your communication with clients will make them feel more appreciated, more known, and less of a recipient for carte blanche marketing.

What can you do to target these segments?

Communicating with your clients is key to maintaining relationships with them, and also keeping them up to date with relevant promotions, offers, and services that you are offering. But how do you do this successfully?

Once you have worked out your segments, you can then question what is relevant for them and communicate this with your customers. This can be done via communication methods that again, work for that specific group of people:

• Social media
• Speaking to customers in-salon
• Flyers
• Creating posters or displays in-salon that are relevant to your client base
• Emails*
• SMS*

These communication methods must also be considered too.

For example:

If you have considered offering a time-sensitive promotion that is only valid between the hours of 10 am and 12 pm, when your salon may be quiet, it would be best to consider which clients are typically going to be free at that time. This would be a time when it would be best to reach out to retirees, stay-at-home parents, those who work from home, and students. So how would you do this?

When you get to know your customers through segmentation, this helps answer how to communicate more successfully. For more elderly clients, it may be best to communicate this to them directly, and also provide them with a flyer to take home with any information that would be relevant for them. Whereas for students, getting in touch via the relevant social media platforms, such as Instagram, or via email* would be more successful. Everything must be considered as a reflection on what you believe that segment of clients a) would like to know more about, and b) how and where they would best receive the information you want to share.

The importance of respecting client data and privacy – what is the balance?

Once you have established:

• Your client segments
• What these segments would want to receive information about
• How you are going to communicate this with them

You must consider the importance of GDPR (General Data Protection Legislation). GDPR governs how we can use, process, and store personal data. Ultimately, what this means for the salon, is that you must protect the data that your clients provide you with when they first join you. You cannot share this data, ask for more than is relevant for your business, and must be granted permission by your clients to communicate with them in specific ways, such as email and SMS.

Once you have gained permissions, this allows you more flexibility in low-cost ways to market directly to those who are already your customers, encouraging a longer customer lifetime value, and boosting return customer rates through a much more personalised way of communicating.