The below segmentation framework is best practice for designing and implementing new segmentation research. From the often under-valued stakeholder interviews to scheduling as many updates and workshops as needed to fully embed and digest the insights, this approach encourages the vital collaboration required between agency and client.

However, even when this staged approach is used to its fullest, success is not guaranteed and many segmentations are not actionable enough and destined to fail. In our experience many of the common issues with segmentation research can be overcome with additional focus in 3 key areas.

By using behavioural science frameworks such as COM-B in the early stages of the segmentation process we can explore motivations and barriers to desired behaviours in a systematic and comprehensive way.

In addition to fully understanding the barriers preventing desired behaviour we can also test potential ‘interventions’ in the quantitative stage. This will allow understanding into which behavioural nudges will resonate most with particular segments – Enabling increased actionability

Communication preference and channel usage are questions nearly always used to profile potential segments but are typically only tagged on to the end of segmentation questionnaires with little thought or depth.

It is common sense that customers want to be communicated with via different channels depending on their information needs and situation. So asking simple blanket questions such as “how would you like to receive information from pharma?” would only reveal superficial preferences and have limited use for targeting.

We recommend asking a matrix of questions, suited to the omni-channel environment we face today. The theory underpinning this matrix was identified through academia and validated though experience. It allows us to uncover preferences linked to purpose, the results from which can be leveraged by sales and marketing teams to communicate effectively with the segments

Typing tools have been a key deliverable for segmentation projects for many years. They ask a handful of questions which assign customers to a particular segment with a certain degree of accuracy.

When possible however, a more efficient way of allocating customers to segments would be to allocate them based on existing information on our clients’ CRM systems or from existing prescribing data, as neither of these approaches require a sales rep to ask questions during a sales visit.

Obviously limitations to this approach do exist, but done correctly this can be an invaluable tool to allocate customers into segments easily and efficiently – Enabling increased actionability

By thinking about and adopting these extra steps we increase the chances of the segmentation being fully adopted and used efficiently by all teams, optimizing the sales potential for therapies.