Traditional marketing classrooms taught marketeers to look at the demographic profile of customers for segmentation.

The hands of the clock moved and next level of talks were on ‘psychographic segmentation’ (simply putting it – categorizing a consumer on the basis of ‘how he thinks’ and ‘what he thinks’).

With the web technology moving faster than the chain of thought, corridor conversations in business organizations, now-a-days, are around ‘behavioral segmentation’. This terminology is all about understanding a consumer on the basis of how he/she ‘behaves’ on your portal/community.

A recent report by Compete Survey (content courtesy: emarketer.com) elucidates that only 39% of US marketeers believe in segment-driven marketing although a full 84% indicate that it will be more important three years from now. (I must confess, Americans never fail to surprise me)!

The survey also stated that 77% of marketers are having problems demonstrating the positive impact of behavioral segmentation on the basis of business performance indicators.

The report has rightly identified one of the essentials of effective behavioral segmentation - identification of ‘right’ segments. However, they miss out on another important point. Organizations’ ability to decode the message that is going out to the consumers.

It’s like saying - opportunityisnowhere (one can either read it as ‘opportunity is now here’ or ‘opportunity is nowhere’). I believe it’s very important for organizations to be completely aware of what they are saying and how it can be deciphered. These messages are the first step to intended actions and therefore its critical for companies to get it right the ‘first time’ itself!

A quick bouncing off the message to folks in the circle (friends / family etc) usually does the trick of understanding how the message is being comprehended (in case the companies can’t afford spending on traditional market testings).

Behavioral marketing is here to stay. It’s about time for organizations to realize that it will just become an effective reality in times to come. The sooner they can identify a way to leverage it, the better it will be. Else, those companies / brands can soon become ‘history’, instead of creating it:)

This is a guest post by one of our regular readers, Shitij.

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