Customer segmentation allows animal businesses to identify and understand different groups of customers at different phases of their customer journey. By dividing your customer base into segments, you can develop more targeted and effective marketing strategies tailored to each segment. This will help you deliver the right message to the right customers, increase your chances of engagement, conversion, and overall customer satisfaction.

Welcome to The Business Animal podcast. Saddle up for a

gallop to the top of the animal industry, where you'll learn how

to tame your wild business beast, with tips, techniques,

and tools that will take overwhelm to obedience school.

And have you wagging your tail with joy. And now your hosts,

Kim Beer, and Cara Taylor Swift.

Hey there business animals. It's Kim with

Be More Business

and Cara with Fast Horse photography. Hi, Kim.

Hi, Kara. Yeah, how are you today? I'm good. I'm good. How

are you?

I'm doing great. And I'm coming to you in like

full on cinematic version, because we have new fiber

Internet. I'm so excited.

Yeah, this is it's actually I don't even know

how to feel about it. Because I can see you for starters. And

normally you're like a blur or a black blob on the screen. And I

can see you and we don't have the delay. We're always having

to deal with like, we can actually have a conversation now

and me not sit around and wait for you to hear the conversation

and then respond. So this is pretty awesome. We're like up in

the tech world.

Yeah. Well, like I've joined 2023, right. Like

I've moved out of the out moved out of the 1990s. Finally, god,

oh my gosh, gotten to reality. And it was so much fun. Because

we got this through our Electric Co Op in Butler, Missouri. It's

Osage Valley electric. And they sent this crew out to run the

line from the pole. This is all been a big adventure for these

poor guys who had to stall the internet because they have to

run it on the light pole. So they had to run it across the

end of our lake. So they had to borrow my boat. One of them got

wet, but they were high end adventurers. By the end of the

day, it was so cute to watch them, figure out how to do it

and send the stuff across. And so yeah, it was entertaining. We

didn't have paddles, but they were really inventive. They use

their shovels to paddle themselves across the lake like

it's impressive.

This is impressive to me. Because I

would think here in Florida that if the technicians were to come

out and there were obstacles in their way, they would just

leave. Like, sorry, you're not eligible. There's a pond in the

way so that's pretty impressive.

Well in Florida See, they could have gotten

eaten by an alligator in the pond. Here is Missouri level.

Yeah, they only had to battle the beavers. I have a family of

beavers who have moved into the end of our lake. But yeah, I

could see if I were in Florida watching some of those Florida

tic TOCs that I see about them damn alligators that can climb

fences and all kinds of stuff. I would think that if I had to get

in a boat in Florida, I would be a little bit more cautious as

well. But here in Missouri, about the worst thing that's

gonna happen to you as a beaver is going to smack you in the

face with his tail. So yes, but they got it run. It got hooked

up. And it's just amazing. On another note, my DPS in my

gaming world went way up. So I'm like, yeah, how you were doing

that before? I don't really care now.

I watch out. Make Believe monsters. You're all in trouble

now that I have good internet. So?

Yeah. Well, what are we talking about today?

Well, you know, that's a great question.

We are talking about segmenting your customers. And this is such

perfect timing. It just went through this process to some

extent on my own because I've been working really hard on

getting my clients segmented. When I first started, I just let

everyone fall, everyone that came in onto my mailing list

just landed in the same client pot, wherever they were coming

from, either I was entering them or they were coming in, they

were just in one big pot. So I've had to, on the back end,

start the segmentation process and then set that up so that

everybody knew that comes in and goes through the segmentation on

their own. So this is such perfect timing to talk about

this.

It is and your state of affairs of how your

customers started out. And then you having to take them through

the segmenting process, I think is really common. I mean, I have

been involved in email marketing and CRM, sales of software. I've

been an affiliate for constant contact and another product

called Keep for over a decade now. So I can tell you that this

is a place where I think a lot of businesses stumble like it's

very difficult, I think to wrap your head around it. And here's

the thing. I had a home organizer come in to my house

yesterday. Very sweet woman, but I have a lot of stuff like we've

just

shoved it in drawers over the years, like it's not organized

in any form or fashion. And to me, it's overwhelming, like it's

crazily overwhelming to think about sorting it all out. And I

feel like a lot of business owners feel that way about this

process, right? They feel like oh my gosh, sorting it out is

going to be so painful, I would rather just live with the mess

than to try to go through the sorting process, because they

don't know how to do it. And so in this episode of The Business

Animal today, what our hope is, is that you walk away with a lot

better understanding of how to actually make this happen, how

to actually make your divisions and your segments in your

customer database, and make it make sense for you and how you

want it organized. And hopefully, I will be able to

channel the women that came her name is Joni, she's with all

things organized. She was so kind because I am definitely not

when it comes to my house, the organized human at all. I'm much

better with my CRM than I am with the stuff in my home. So

hopefully we will be as kind and good hearted as Joni was

yesterday with me with my home in this episode. So do you want

me to dive right in?

Yeah, you can dive right in, I just, I just

want to add that I understand. Because this is what I did. When

I first started my business. I knew I needed an email list, but

I didn't exactly know what the heck I was going to do with it.

And I didn't fully understand the different types of clients I

was going to have coming in and the different phases that they

were going to go through in the journey. So what I did is I was

like, well, having a mailing list, like having a client list

and having this this is better than nothing. And then I can

deal with segmenting later. So that has been a painful process

that later dealing with it later. So if there's folks out

there that are just getting started, maybe we're also

hopefully catching some people like at the early stages of

that. And that would be helpful. I would that would make me happy

too.

And I think that you have some good things in

here about the why. And I think it's important to remember,

there's a reason why you are doing this, that is going to

make your life so much better. And the bottom line to it is, is

you're going to end up with more money. And if that is something

you want in your business, this is what this process does, it

gets you more sales, it gets you more repeat business, it gets

you more loyalty, it converts people. So it's worked on. Yeah,

the concept here is that it feels like you're doing a lot of

work for what appears to be like, busy work or no reason.

But the bottom line to it is it is anything but that. And I

think that this kind of stuff gets by a lot of business

owners, it gets kicked to the curb, because it doesn't feel

like it's that important or that urgent. But let me tell you

something, if you're looking at your bank account, or you're

looking at your balance sheet, and you're saying damn, I wished

I had more money, this is a place where you can start to

make that happen. So hear me loud and clear. There's a reason

why you want to do this. The other thing that happens in

this, I think people don't understand their sales process

completely, or they're still figuring it out. And that

becomes an issue for them in order to figure out what their

sales process is. So our number one and our big three today is

understanding the consumer and the customer journey. And I

think it's really, really important to start here, because

this is where you form your sales process. This is how you

understand how customers move through your business. And just

to give you a heads up as to where we're going, dear

listeners out there is that we're gonna talk about the

timeline piece. And then we're going to talk about how to

effectively communicate and then we're going to talk about how to

use a system for our big three today. Are you ready for me to

dive into my whole spiel about consumer or customer journey?

Yes, you can go ahead and do that.

The only thing I will add to what you

just said, is that the conversion part is probably the

most important. But that other piece about customer

satisfaction, like this is a great way when you get this

figured out. This is how you're going to nurture and retain as

well. So you're going to have those repeat customers. So

that's another reason Yes, you need to look at your bottom

line. But that is another piece of that that is huge. And that

sometimes that gets kind of pushed to the side once they're

through your process. So

absolutely, yes, jump into the customer journey.

So we've discussed this before on this

podcast. Now if you've heard it before, I recommend that you

listen to it again because it's my experience that every time

you go through the process of learning about your consumer

customer journey, that you are going to get a little bit more

Are clarity and a little bit more information about it. So

we're gonna divide this journey into two steps. There's the

consumer part of it, which is not in your business. And you

don't have as much control over that part, but you need to

really understand it, because you can interact with customers

at any phase during that part. And it's important that you

interact with them appropriately, because, for

example, you wouldn't talk to somebody who is just really

aware that there's analysis solution to their problem, in

the same way that you would talk to somebody who's already

interacted with your business, been in your shop, maybe even

called you on the phone and done some type of discovery or

questioning call. So you need to be really aware of that consumer

part of things and where people are, then once that consumer

makes the connection, then they move into being a customer. And

it's important to understand how they move through the process of

being a customer. And again, this is sometimes where people

drop the ball as well, because they start to understand, oh, I

need new sales to make money. So the consumer part comes really

easily they start to learn about that. And a lot of aha has

happened. And then they're like, Oh, you're now a customer, I got

you, you're in my basket. But customers are wiggly little

rabbits and they'll jump right on out of the basket. So you've

got to you don't keep the lid on it and kind of keep them under

under control. It's it's they're gonna hop away. That's a cute

metaphor for Yeah, so cute, little metaphor.

Okay, so Eugene Swartz back in 1966. We all love Mr. Eugene

Swartz. You can google him. He's an interesting character. But he

came up with the consumer journey. And there's five steps

to this journey, the consumer starts out completely unaware

they have a problem. And we all know people like that. And then

at some point, they become aware they have a problem. But they

don't know that there's a solution for it. And then

eventually, they'll come to solution aware, then they become

aware of your specific solution. And then they become most aware.

And at that point in time, most aware is usually where they make

connection. And they move from being in the consumer journey

into the customer journey, because now they've reached out

to you. And they have made the connection, then at this point,

they move into a consideration phase where they're going to

think about whether or not they want to buy something from you.

And then the conversion phase where they say, Yes, I do, or

no, they don't, and they leave. And then if they say yes, then

they're going to move into the loyalty phase. So every single

phase in this journey, in these nine steps is really, really

important in understanding how you're communicating to people

where they're at. So one of the first things that you want to do

when you're segmenting your customers is you want to figure

out, what conversations do I need to have with people in each

specific zone, right. So truthfully, you're not going to

be talking to unaware people, that doesn't usually happen in

any type of a communication thing. Problem aware, people are

going to be asking their friends, or basically they're

going to be complaining about the problem. And the friend is

gonna say, Hey, I found a solution to that. And they're

going to move into solution aware, solution aware is where

people use Google, these are where the people are going to

come to your website, then when they see your website, they're

going to through Google searches, or through their

friends or referral, they're going to be now become your

solution aware. And this is where you can start really

communicating with them. Because here's where you want to utilize

this journey to point out how you're different. Point out how

you can solve their problem, point out more education about

their problem, whatever the case may be. And then they become

very aware about you, then they reach out, now they've moved to

the customer part. And now you have to shift the conversation,

because now you've created the awareness with them told them a

little bit about how you're different. Now you need to help

sell them. So the consideration phase is really the sales space.

At that point, they're going to say yes or no, if they say yes,

then you go ahead and provide the service part of the deal,

which we're going to talk about in the next of the big three.

And then finally, they move into being that loyal bunny in the

basket, but you're not done. You've got to keep them coming

back. You also need to send out stuff to ask for reviews. I

mean, there's a ton of places here where you can really

interact with the client and provide them better service and

better sales support in order to keep them coming back. And we'll

Like we said, it's very important to your bottom line,

because here's the statistic, a returning customer spends 70%,

more than the first time they were with you. And let me tell

you, my friends, that is important. So actually those

people that are already on your list, they're gold, the ones

that are in your database are gold, and keeping your

relationship up with them is really, really important. Do you

think I covered that? Well, do you have any questions? Cara or

anything you'd like to add?

No, I think you did. And we did a full

episode on customer journey. Yes. And I will go before the

end of this episode, and find that episode number so that we

can give it to folks. I'll pull that up real quick, too. So yes,

I do think that we covered that. And if people want more detail,

we have a full episode that we've pulled on this.

Absolutely. And I want to plug my book, while I'm

here, I wrote a great little book called The Little Book of

big sales moves, that talks a lot about this journey, and then

how it corresponds to the sales process in your business. And

it's available for $10. That includes the shipping if you go

to be more business.com. So if you go to be more business.com,

scroll down, you'll see the book right there, order your copy,

it'll come to you if you want an autograph to drop me a little

email, and I'll even sign the book for you. Those come

directly from me, and you can also get it on Amazon. But

you'll pay $4 more in you don't get my personal love. I was

gonna say I didn't get a signed version. I guess I'm gonna have

to haul it with me to Montana next later this month. Yes, you

are to get a signed version. You are actually one of my first

sales.

I was your first sale. Yes. Yes, I think

you were my first. But you weren't signing them at that

point? Probably.

Okay, so do we want to go let's see, considering what you want,

and how to effectively communicate with customers for

better sales and service. So this is the next step. Once you

have people through the process, now you need to look at this. So

why don't you take this one away, you've got some great

points here in our document. Well, this is what I'm actually

working on in my business right now. And you can please feel

free to jump in and flesh out because this is kind of what I'm

working on. So I had this big pile, I'm calling it a pile of

clients, past clients, possible clients, people who had shown

interest but never gone anywhere, like you can picture

you probably have them in your business too. If you're a silly

person like me, and didn't really understand how important

this was at the beginning of your business, you probably have

this big pile or pot of clientele are consumers that are

just waiting for something to happen that are on your list. So

I have been going through this phase. And I went through the

process of segmenting, which was really time consuming. But I did

a lot of things to segment. And I feel like I have my people

pretty well segmented out at this point, like I've got them

in their own little pots now. So now I'm in this phase where I'm

kind of mapping out what I want that communication to look like

for those people now that I've have it segmented. So the first

thing that I have started working on is really identifying

all of my customer touch points. So I've gone through and thought

about, okay, I know they're coming in through the website,

social media, I'm getting emails, I'm getting phone calls,

I'm meeting people in person, I have people that make purchases,

maybe they go online and purchase gift certificates for

other family members. So I'm kind of identifying all of the

touch points. And I have done that. And so now I'm at the

stage where I'm really working out my customer journey. So I'm

spending time determining all of those stages that a customer

will go through when they actually booked me and when they

interact. Or I'm just kind of going through and mapping each

one of those possible, like Choose Your Own Adventure

mapping system that you could have there. And then I'm going

in and I'm mapping all of those touch points that I talked about

originally to the journey. So if they're coming in through my

website, they're coming in through social media through

email, wherever they're coming in, I'm the mapping them to that

journey in the right spots. So that's been a real adventure for

me, and I'm still working on that. And I'm excited like kind

of for the next stages, which is for me identifying pain points,

and then looking for any opportunity that I can to

improve experience because I have a lot of stuff that I

already do to improve experience through my process. So now I'm

just working on really kind of linking it in and automating it

in all the right places to take some of that work off of my

table. What do you think about that process? Kim? As someone

who has done this a lot for other people have done it for

yourself and then you're watching me muddle my way

through it. I love everything you're doing and I think it's so

crucial but what I want to say to our listeners Yeah Is it can

feel

feel overwhelming, because you see

the big picture at the end of the tunnel. And where you are

right now makes that bigger picture look really, really,

really far away. So one of the first things I want to say is

you can start this process in a much smaller way it start with a

little bit at a time, you don't have to try it to create the

entire thing at one time. The thing that I loved about Kara's

whether she was talking about this is that it escalated,

right. So she started by getting the pile of customers together,

then she started looking at their journey, then she started

mapping her own points of how she wanted to move them through.

And now she's looking at leveling up into understanding

them better into creating better experience for them and into the

final piece, which is automating as much of it is as there as

possible. Automation and improvement of the customer

experience are two things that I think we all want as business

owners. But I think it's also important to understand that

there's a lot of work goes in ahead of those things. So we've

all been sold on the fact that automation makes our businesses

easier. But when you're in this process, and correct me if I'm

wrong for you, Kara, it's a lot more work than you normally

would have. Yeah, I've had to dedicate like really dedicate

like days to this, like sitting down and thinking through and

watching videos. And it's more difficult than what I expected

it to be like, because I didn't start out the right way. And I

even hoped to move into a phase where I'm measuring the

performance of what I've created, where I'm actually

tracking sales better, and looking at conversion rates for

people going through my process. So I really want to get to that

phase, where I am starting to see oh, wow, like this person

went through this whole process and it converted to a sale, you

know, so I'm hoping to get to that place where I can regularly

just monitor the conversion rates. Well, yeah. And then you

could get into experimentation, like how can you up the

conversion rates? You know, what came up all the time? Yeah, this

is another part of your business. That's not done. I

mean, it just, it's a constant work in progress. Like your

website, I have these people and say, Oh, I just did my website.

It's done. And I'm like, yeah, no, it's not.

This is the same thing. I just went through the process of

segmenting my customers and creating automations. And I'm

done. No, you're not. This is one of those things where if you

start to set that expectation, that it's going to be a

completed checkmark on your list, it's not going to function

for you. It is a routine maintenance program, that you

have to keep going back and looking and looking and looking

for. Before we get off this topic on this particular big

three, though, I want to talk with the businesses who are

sitting there going, I don't even know how to start. So I

think that the first step in all of this is to take a look at

your specific business model. And I'm just going to run

through a few examples. So let's say that your specific business

model is a product, like you're making an equestrian product,

we'll just go with that. So in that case, you have to look at

your product, and how is it used? Right? Is it something

that people buy once? And they have it for a really long time?

Is it something that people buy and then have to use again and

again and again, on a regular basis with their horse like a

supplement? Or the first one would be like a piece of tack?

Or is it something that maybe has an upgrade? or additional

attributes that can be added to it? Or things in it that need to

be replaced? I mean, you have to look at like how does your

customer use what it is that they purchased from you? Or do

you have different versions of it? Do you maybe have a version

that is less expensive, and a version that's more expensive, a

version that does more things than the other version did. So

you have to look at that kind of person moved from version eight,

a version B. So you've got to look at what your business model

is, how does your business model work as a manufacturer, and from

that point, you've got to look is how do people get pocketed in

those things? Because you don't want to send an invitation to

upgrade a product to somebody who already has the most

upgraded version. As a consumer. That to me, feels like you just

don't care, right? Like you're dumping me in the same bucket

with everybody else. And maybe it's from the perspective of I

know that you're dumping me in the bucket with everybody else

and haven't gone through to take a look at who I am

doesn't earn you brownie points with me, let's put it that way,

as a consumer. So understanding that from a product perspective,

let's say your attack store, in that particular case, if your

attack store, you don't want to encourage the people who ride

English, you don't want to send them information or contact them

with Western imagery or a bunch of Western stuff, because

they're not interested in it, it's not their thing. Same thing

goes the other way, you wouldn't want to do English to Western,

or there's a whole gated horse category, or you can even break

it down further. There are some people who want to have like if

in in the western industry, there's ranch people. And then

there's another refinement for people who show western

pleasure. And there's another refinement for performance

horses, and on and on and on. So you have to look at your

specific business, how your business is set up, and how the

consumers and customers in your business, what are their

attributes, what are the things that make them unique, and those

things that make them unique, that will allow you to better

communicate with them, to offer them either better service, or

more opportunities to purchase from you that are specific to

them, the better you know your customer, the better these

things happen. I had many, many years ago, in one of my email

trainings, the person who said this, I think was brilliant.

Every marketing email that you send out should be well enough

segmented in your database, that email feels like it was written

personally to the person receiving it. And it just let

that sink in for a minute. If you are good in this process,

you can create that you can create a world where the

communications that you put out, I feel like they're absolutely

targeted specifically to that individual, because they solve

their specific problem, and not to the myriad of other people in

your business that don't have that specific problem. So it's a

point of figuring that out for your business. One other

scenario I want to say is service businesses. So in a

service business, you may have different, you may have

different levels of people, you have the people who come and go

in your service business, like they come in, let's say you're a

dog groomer, they bring their dog in every once in a while,

actually some of them for dog groomers that are listening to

this, they may be your painful customers who like weight to

their dog, as Superman added before they bring it in and

there, they agitate you. So maybe for those people you want

it you'd like give them a specific segment, don't tell

them they're in that segment. And maybe you send them extra

extra little communications about they need to schedule

their dog's grooming appointment. Or maybe you need

to sort it out by breed. Some breeds of dogs need to be

groomed more often than other breeds, then you have your

regular customers who like are coming in on a really regular

basis. And they're always bringing their dog in at a

specific time. And you might have a whole different reminder

cycle for them than you would for the occasional person, you

may want to have like the person who brings their dog in for the

first time, you may want to have an entire follow up system

created for that individual, about how to care for their dog

after the groom and on and on, to kind of get them to working

into how you do things. And dear dog groomers cuz I know you all

are introverts out there. That's why you became dog groomers

because you prefer dogs over people understand if you do

this, if you put the time and effort into this, you can create

systems where you're not the one who has to communicate, the

system does the communication friend. So you don't have to be

constantly talking to people. Yay, you can spend more time

with the dogs and less with humans. And I know that super

appealing because I know a lot of dog groomers. But it's a

point of getting down for your specific business model. Exactly

who and how you are communicating with people? And

how can you be more targeted and more effective and more

efficient in your communications? And I always

like to think of this part two is how can I divide my customers

up in a way that creates better customers for me that are more

easy, more joyful to work with than they would be if I didn't

communicate to them in this way? I'm off my soapbox.

No, I think that's awesome. And you've kind

of led us into I think number three, which is develop a

system. I mean, you've kind of led us right into that

So for me, that system has started with using my

CRM, and trying to learn that process, because that's where

I'm at right now. Like, I feel like I'm sitting here, I've been

watching video after video, just really learning how to, I've had

this monster of a CRM that for years I've been paying for, and

I only use bits and pieces of it to fit my need. And so now I

really feel like I'm starting to put it to work, and I'm gonna

have like a flowing system. And that's kind of like a, yay, it

only took me how many years to like, finally get to this place.

But we're all a work in progress, every single one of

us. Exactly, you're gonna be celebrating that system, because

once the system is in place, then it gets off of your plate,

and the system starts to handle it. And when you do make that

transition, it's like having an employee, but an employee who

never calls in sick, who does their job without fail exactly

how you told them to do it, which is why you want to go

through this whole process and figuring out how you want it to

be, because you're going to choreograph it and that system

is going to carry it out exactly like you told it to. So the end

all to the system is that you have to figure out how you're

communicating with your customers. If you communicate by

email, which is the easiest probably to automate, then a CRM

or email marketing software is what you need to create that

system in. If you have a combination of live

conversations with people or SMS text messaging, or things like

that added into it, then you probably need to uplevel from

basic email marketing up into a CRM that can handle those

things. Yeah. And then, if you're at the baseline, where

you don't have a ton of customers yet, or you're a

really small business, you can manage a lot of this using a

spreadsheet. To be honest, it gets a little cumbersome. Once

you get over about 100 people on there, it becomes a little

cumbersome to use this spreadsheet, but for those of

you who don't want to invest in some of this other software,

it's a way that you can do it. Okay. Is there anything else

that we want to add to this topic? I don't think so. I think

we've covered it. All right. I am still looking for that

episode. I just pulled up the episodes and I haven't found it

yet. The one that we did where we talked all about customer

journey, because I remember having the whole conversation

about what was his name, ugg resorts? Yes, our revenue is

amazing. Yes. So I will find that and I'll put it in show

notes for everyone. And that way you can refer back to it at a

later date. And the meantime, thank you so much for joining us

today. Just a reminder of this episode. We covered the consumer

the customer journey and then moving into consider how you

want to really communicate with your customers to increase sales

and improve just overall client experience. And then we touched

a little bit on developing a system and how to get you

started with that. So we hope you guys have enjoyed this

episode today. Don't forget if you're a photographer or you

want to learn more about photography or you just enjoy

taking pictures, you can find us with our pal Phyllis Burchette

Phyllis PICHETTE photo over on our other show cowgirls with

cameras, we'd love to have you join us over there. Thanks for

listening to this episode of The Business Animal. Be sure to

subscribe so you never miss an episode. And if you learned

something today, leave us a review. To learn more. Find us

at the business animal.com We'd love to hear from you. Until

next time, keep your business well trained with The Business