Audience Segmentation
Definition
The practice of splitting the campaign’s full audience into named groups — target, decision-maker, base, persuadable, media, implementer — and tailoring the message, channel and call to action for each.
It is the bridge between stakeholder-analysis (who is in the landscape) and framing-and-narrative (what each group needs to hear), and is the precondition for any messenger, channel, or tone choice.
Effective segmentation names each group with an operational label the team actually uses — not abstract demographic bins — so that every tactic can be checked against the question who exactly is this aimed at. The values-based segmentation tradition — Chris Rose and Phil Bennett’s CDSM psychographic model, drawing on motivational posture rather than age/income/region — is the best-developed operational form of the same idea at the message-design layer. [source: campaign-strategy-rose] At the stakeholder-engagement layer, the Community Tool Box treats stakeholder mapping as one of the standard organising steps before action planning, alongside assessing community needs and resources. [source: community-tool-box]
FAQ
What is audience segmentation?
Audience Segmentation is the practice of splitting the campaign’s full audience into named groups — target, decision-maker, base, persuadable, media, and implementer — and tailoring the message, channel, and call to action for each. It is the bridge between stakeholder-analysis, which maps who is in the landscape, and framing-and-narrative, which decides what each group needs to hear, and is the precondition for any messenger, channel, or tone choice the team makes downstream.
What makes audience segmentation effective?
Effective audience segmentation names each group with an operational label the team actually uses — not abstract demographic bins — so that every tactic can be checked against the question of who exactly the campaign is aimed at. That operational naming is what lets the message, channel, and call to action stay tailored as the plan moves from stakeholder-analysis to framing-and-narrative to messenger choice.
What traditions of segmentation does the page distinguish?
The page distinguishes two operational forms of segmentation at different layers. At the message-design layer, the values-based tradition — Chris Rose and Phil Bennett’s CDSM psychographic model — draws on motivational posture rather than age, income, or region, and is the best-developed operational form. At the stakeholder-engagement layer, the Community Tool Box treats stakeholder mapping as one of the standard organising steps before action planning, alongside assessing community needs and resources.
Full page: [[audience-segmentation]].