From the category archives:

Market Research

Segmentation Exposed: SCU Project Kickoff

March 1, 2010

This is one of a series of posts about a real-life attitudinal audience segmentation project.  See other posts in this series.
This project was undertaken for a small faith-based university in the midwest (I’ll call them “SCU” – Small Christian U – for the purposes of this discussion).  The university offers undergraduate, graduate, [...]

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Segmentation Exposed: Behind The Scenes of an Actual Research Project

February 24, 2010

This is one of a series of posts about a real-life attitudinal audience segmentation project.  See other posts in this series.
I’m a marketing strategist.  I’ve spent the last 25 years (gack!) learning (and then helping other organizations learn) how to get the right message to the right people in order to get those people [...]

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Mind Mapping – Beyond Brainstorming

February 23, 2010

I use mind-mapping software like crazy.  But in addition to its obvious assistance with brainstorming, I’ve found it very useful in a variety of planning activities I do for clients every day.  I use a Mac-only program called MindNode Pro, developed by Markus Müller, an independent software developer in Vienna.  (Markus also has an outstanding [...]

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Are You Insulting Your Customers?

January 28, 2010

I am amazed at how many companies have fallen into the habit of regularly insulting their customers.
If I pointed them out, I GUARANTEE that each and every one of them would strenuously object to this accusation, claiming (and, in all likelihood, truly believing) that each and every customer they have is of the utmost value [...]

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Obama’s Audience Segmentation

January 19, 2010

USA TODAY has a fascinating article today about a new USA TODAY/Gallup Poll looking at the President’s approval rating and how he’s faring in public opinion.
AMAZING!  It’s attitudinal audience segmentation for the President of the United States!
I’ve conducted audience segmentation for big companies, small companies, business-to-business, business-to-consumer, government and even a faith-based university.  I’ve seen [...]

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The Great Debate

November 2, 2009

I had an interesting experience last week when a client pulled me aside to make me aware that the company’s CRM guru was loudly expressing his concern that this “warm and fuzzy” attitudinal approach to audience segmentation couldn’t hold a candle to good, old-fashioned database analytics.
This isn’t the first time it’s happened.  I often run [...]

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There’s No Crying In Research

September 28, 2009

I am currently finishing up an audience segmentation project for a large multi-channel retailer.  As usual, we’re trying to identify the key motivations for their various customer groups.
I was surprised to hear from my client contact that, when pursuing such a project was discussed in a team meeting, one of the team members was actually [...]

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