Part 1 of our two part review for small businesses on market research tools available through the Arkansas State University Small Business and Technology Development Center for market segmentation.

1. The Right Eyeballs Who Is Your Perfect Customer?
By Herb Lawrence, Center Director, ASU
Small Business and Technology
Development Center
Helping Small Businesses Grow…From the
Delta to the Ozarks
Last Tuesday on the Arkansas State University Blog, I started
what I hope will be a series of Tuesday Marketing Tips my readers will find valuable.
In the blog article "Get Your Marketing Message Right" I brought up a challenge that
many of my small business friends have mentioned in trying to get their marketing
messages noticed by potential customers.
I mentioned 8 Keys to Successful Marketing Messages that will help you stand out
above all the noise. The first one, and to me most critical is: My
message must be seen by the RIGHT EYEBALLS. By right
eyeballs I mean the potential customer who will be most interested
in what I have to say. For any business to be successful they
have to know who their ideal customer really is.
What I mean is you have to know your "world". At the ASU
Small Business and Technology Development Center I know my
world:
• A distinct geographic area 15 Counties in Northeast and North-Central Arkansas I am
definitely a "Local Business" with a specific geographic trade zone.
• My world is For Profit (or at least want to make a profit) businesses in my 15 county area.
• My clients are small... Generally $0.00 to $5 million in revenues and from 1 to 50 employees.
• Finally...they have a problem or maybe see a potential opportunity but don't know how to
find the right answers
At the ASU SBTDC our “Perfect Customer” is a small for-profit
business, less than 50 employees and making under $5 million in
sales, in one of my 15 counties who realizes he (or she) needs
help in a particular area that is keeping them up at night.
So who is your "Perfect Customer"?
Whether you are a B2B like me (business to business) or a B2C
like 75% of all businesses, market segmenting is really very easy
IF you have the resources to know where to look to get good hard
data.

2. Here is a quick example of the kind of data you need especially as a B2C: retailer,
hospitality, service, or health field AND it is available to you at your nearest Small
Business Center.
Let's say you are a jewelry store in Jonesboro, Arkansas (Craighead County) and you
want to know who your best customers are. While there are a lot of ways to segment a
market, for most brick and mortar retailers’ demographic data is the best place to start.
If you met with one of the ASU Consultants here is the first thing you would learn:
Best customers for Jewelry
• Young adult households aged 25-34
• Middle aged adult households aged 45-64
• Married couples without children at home
• Married couples with school-aged or older children at home
Households in Average Market Trends in consumer jewelry
Craighead Expenditure Potential consumption
• Average household
Under 25 2,779 83.62 $232,379 spending on jewelry fell by
22% between 2000 and
2009 with the great
25-34 5,558 137.15 $762,279 recession may continue to
fall with tighter budgets due
35-44 4,892 99.28 $485,677 to limited discretionary
spending potential.
45-54 4,520 119.83 $541,631 Total household spending
on jewelry in 2009
55-64 3,933 124.16 $488,321 • $12,708,627,100.00.
Nationally
• $2,796,623.95 In Craighead
65-74 2,555 88.91 $227,165 County
Over 75 2,041 28.99 $59,168 Average household in 2011
will spend
• $105.23 per year nationally
Total 26,278 $2,796,623 • $134.03 per year in
Craighead County
Demographic data on the number of
households came from our Demographics
Now subscription that allows us to access
a variety of demographic features by county, city, even zip code.
Consumer expenditure data from new Strategist Publications, Inc.
“Who’s Buying Apparel” that shows by demographic categories
how much households spend on a variety of goods and services.

3. Craighead County Households by Age
under 25 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64 65-74 over 75
If you take a look at the
7.8% 10.6% two pie charts below it
quickly becomes obvious
9.7%
that out of my "World" of
potential Jewelry
21.2% customers in Craighead
15.0% County, certain groups
make a lot more sense to
target.
The first chart shows the
17.2% 18.6%
Craighead County
households by age
groups as a percentage of
the total number of
households in the trade
zone.
The second "pie" shows the percentage distribution of those segmented households to
the total market potential in the county for jewelry purchases.
Notice households aged 25-34 make up
21.2% of TOTAL households BUT they
make up 27.3% of the market potential!
Whereas households 75 plus make up 7.8%
of total households in the county but only
2.1% of the market potential for jewelry
purchases.
humm.... And finally the chart below shows us exactly which household segments are
the best to target. This is an indexed chart with 100 representing average
household spending on jewelry.
Those segments OVER 100 are the best to target because as a group they spend
MORE than the average on our product! Households age 25-34 followed by 55-64,
then 45-54 year old head of households.

4. Best Customers Indexed
Now the next challenge is to look at
140 130 those 3 groups closely....and try to
114 118 understand:
120
94
100 84
79
80  How those 3 distinct groups
60 think so we can create the
40 28 right message that fits each
20
category. Because the
RIGHT message to 25-34
0
under 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64 65-74 75
year olds ISN'T the right
25 plus message for 55-64.
And, age is only one way to segment
your market.
Because jewelry is definitely a discretionary purchase it might also be helpful to
segment those Craighead County households by INCOME.
Demographic segmentation, whether selling on-line to potential consumers around the
United States, or in a specific geographic trade zone like Craighead County allows our
small business friend to start slicing and dicing his potential customers into
discrete segments and start thinking about how to craft his marketing message to
appeal to the different groups.
In addition to demographic and consumer expenditure information like this, it is also
helpful to pull in another tool for specific
geographic areas that the ASU SBTDC
uses Community Tapestry
Segmentation with a Dominant
Tapestry Map from ESRI like the one
above where we slice the geographic
areas of your trade zone into
homogeneous areas based on lifestyle
and attitudes.
For a more detailed description of ESRI’s
Community Tapestry Segmentation read
my recent article Simple Target Marketing
Tools for Small Business that I posted to
Slideshare.

5. The information provided in the jewelry store example came from New Strategists
Publications, Inc eBook: "Who Buys Apparel".
This New Strategist Publications “Who’s Buying Apparel”
provides extensive segmentation information on all types of
personal apparel items from jewelry to men’s suits, children’s
shoes to lingerie.
The Arkansas State University Small Business and
Technology Development Center maintains other editions on
any other possible consumer product or service from:
 Transportation to food,
 Entertainment to household services,
 Insurance to health care.
 And more
This data will zero your marketing efforts to the right buyers whether a plumber or
a dentist, restaurant or dress shop and virtually any business in between.
After you get the data you are able to determine the RIGHT EYEBALLS that you most
want to see your marketing message. Next Step: Make sure your message is in the
RIGHT place for those targeted eyeballs to SEE your message. In our coming blog
article we will discuss how to choose the right media channels.
In our 15 county area? Then call the ASU SBTDC consultants at (870) 972-3517, or E-
mail us for information asusbtdc@astate.edu for your free and confidential appointment
today.