Today we’re sharing a quick tip to make it a little easier to market your HR business: segment your target audience.
(By ‘HR’ we mean Generalist HR, Recruitment, Learning & Development, Employment Law, Compensation & Benefits, Diversity & Inclusion, Employee Engagement, etc).
This episode will help you to target the right types of businesses and people within those companies.
Scroll down for the video, podcast audio, and article.
Before we start . . .
Check out the HR Business Accelerator . . .
The HR Business Accelerator helps people grow and/or start their own businesses in the broad ‘HR’ field.
We’ve helped hundreds of HR consultants around the world to grow successful businesses – the HR Business Accelerator will help you too.
To learn more or to join, visit: HR Business Accelerator.
Use Buyer Categories To Segment Your Target Audience
One easy way to segment your target audience is to come up with a few ‘buyer categories’. This is just a list of your main customer categories with some background information to guide you.
The method is good for generalist firms and consultants who don’t want to ‘niche down’ or specialize in a particular industry or sector.
All categories are different as they all have different needs, pressures, and frustrations.
For example, for Ben’s HR consulting business, he divided his website into the following categories:
- HR Professionals in Mid-Large Companies
- Business Owner
- Office Manager/Administration
- External Consultant To Companies
- Student
- Other
Very simple.
I did this because they were all looking for different things.
HR professionals – they will know what they are looking for and will be prepared to spend more because they are buying for a large corporation. They will, however, often be quite slow-moving as they don’t always control the budget – they may have to get approval from the powers that be. They also need a lot of proof to back up their choice – their reputation is on the line.
Business Owners – they have a lot on their plate so they are looking for different things. They may also want things that are quick or low-cost so they can solve an immediate problem. They have smaller budgets than large companies but their buying cycle is much shorter (ie. a good way for you to fill cash flow gaps while the large companies slowly make up their mind about working with you).
Office Manager/Administrator – This group is made of people who have typically been handed the responsibility for ‘HR stuff’ such as staff onboarding, placing job advertisements, general HR admin. They do this on top of their normal ‘day job’ so they are busy and don’t have the same in-depth expertise as an HR consultant.
External Consultants To Companies – They were generally other consultants looking for information, partnerships, and referrals.
Student – I just put the Student category in there so they wouldn’t mess up my database. They would only be researching stuff and not actually looking to hire an HR firm.
Do you see how that works?
At a very basic level, you can know who is coming to your website and what are their main drivers.
You can have:
- segmented pages
- information
- special offers dedicated to each category
These will be more attractive to them when the time comes to make a buying decision.
Take a moment and think about how would you divide up your customer/client categories.
- By roles?
- By the typical characteristics of their business?
- By industries?
- By company size?
- By their immediate problems and longer-term challenges?
You could step things up a notch and add data to the process.
For example, this might involve putting all your customer/client details into a spreadsheet along with all the revenue each one has generated.
Once they’re in the spreadsheet, you can slice and dice the data in various ways.
You might look at:
- Average/total customer revenue by industry.
- Average/total customer revenue by business headcount.
- Average/total customer revenue by location.
- Average/total customer revenue by role in the company of key contact.
- Average/total customer revenue by role in company of project type.
- Average/total customer revenue by role in the company of use case/reason for using your services.
- And so on.
This will help you to target the right types of businesses and people within those companies.
It will help you understand their needs, wants, questions, and concerns (and what they don’t want).
What have you got to offer in terms of those specific challenges (no generic mission statements or jargon please)?
Once you’ve given some thought to the different segments in your target market, there are plenty of ways in which you can play to your strengths and talk directly to these people.
For example:
- Change your website home page so that the wording, layout, design, imagery, menus, and content are focused on your target market.
- Add self-selection to your website and menus (“Which of the following options best describes you…?“) to guide people to a tailored page or section of your website.
- Create use cases or case studies that address different segments of your target audience.
- Create sections or pages within your website designed just for each target segment.
- Create blog content aimed at each specific target segment.
- Create webinars and videos that address specific issues for sub-sections of your audience.
- Share social media updates that speak to different segments on different occasions.
- Segment your email/CRM database according to the different target audiences.
- Get more website conversion ideas from industry experts here.
- And much more.
How would you divide up your customer/client categories?
It will help you understand their needs, wants, questions, and concerns (and what they don’t want).
While you’re here, check out the HR Business Accelerator . . .
The HR Business Accelerator helps people who run their own businesses in the broad ‘HR’ field and helps people who are getting ready to start their own HR business.
We’ve helped hundreds of HR consultants around the world to grow their own successful HR businesses – the HR Business Accelerator will help you too.
To learn more or to join, visit: HR Business Accelerator.
Video: A Quick Marketing Tip For Your HR Business – Segment Your Target Audience
Podcast: A Quick Marketing Tip For Your HR Business – Segment Your Target Audience
You can find the podcast on all the main podcast players.
About The ‘A Better HR Business’ Podcast
In my HR marketing podcast, I talk with different HR consultants and HR tech companies from around the world to learn about what they do and how they keep their businesses healthy and moving in the right direction.
If you have questions you want to ask me about growing an HR consultancy or marketing for HR tech companies, just let me know or visit the HR marketing services page.
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Enjoy the show!
