Every marketer knows the importance of having strong messages that are relevant to the potential customer. We like to say that relevancy drives response. However, before you start spending all your time on your creative and your messaging, it is important to first understand who your ideal customer is.

Having the most well written messages going out to only 60% of your market means you’re leaving opportunity on the table. Before jumping into social media and worrying about what you are going to say, you must profile your channel and understand who your ideal targets are. It’s only with a strong list of targets that you can begin to optimize the next steps in your marketing and sales processes and grow revenue.

Segmenting Messages – To Each, Their Own
One method of optimization that is often discussed is segmenting. Segmentation of your messages is widely regarded as a proven way to improve responses and results. Each individual customer you interact with has a unique set of challenges and a unique interest in your organization. Thus, it is critical to speak to each segment or channel in the way that is relevant to them.

Segmenting of lists and creating unique messages has been discussed for years in both direct mail and email marketing campaigns. So, in this post, we are going to focus on segmenting in a couple new social media platforms: Twitter & LinkedIn.

More IS Better – In Twitter
With all the discussion about how to monetize Twitter and stories of company’s like Dell using Twitter to generate millions in sales, there has been little talk to date about segmenting messages. What Dell, and its army of Twitter accounts such as @DellOutlets, has actually done very well is utilize segmentation to speak uniquely to different targets across the platform.

If you visit Dell’s Twitter website, you can find a page dedicated to promoting their multiple Twitter accounts that is designed to give speak with their different target groups. For example, Dell has twitter accounts for: Home computer users, small businesses, gamers and those who are seeking discounted products. Dell provides many Twitter accounts in multiple languages. They have Twitter accounts that drive people to their technical blogs. Dell even has @DellLounge which is described as covering the “latest trends in Music, Film, Fashion and much more.” In the right column, Dell also lists many of the other social community tools at you can use to hook up with their brand and product lines.

Dell is a great example of a company who has a strong multi-channel social media approach that works together. Their Twitter content is separated out so that customers can get the information relevant to them.

People Are Beginning To Stare – At Your Behavior On Social Media Platforms
Earlier this year, Forrester research group released survey results showing that most companies have failed to understand how to utilize social media tools in ways that are specific to their customers.

“Most B-to-B marketers miss the nuances of their audiences’ preferences by jumping directly to deploying social technology without first profiling the behavior of their customers,” said Laura Ramos, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester.

Forrester Research began profiling behavior-type categories to allow for segmenting of social media data that is used for targeting business-to-business buyers of technology products.

Employees Don’t Count – On Twitter
While it makes sense that a large brand will have a strong need for segmenting on a social media platform such as Twitter, consider your company’s range of products and/or services. There is a lot of research showing that segmenting works in other forms of marketing. Having one company Twitter account to talk to your customer base probably doesn’t make sense.

Your employees having their own personal Twitter accounts isn’t enough. There are some who believe that email marketing has depreciated and customers are tuning out their messages. Not properly segmenting on Twitter will lead to “Unfollows” (which Twitter does not currently provide a tracking mechanism for) and people giving up on getting the message they want from your tweet.

LinkedIn – Segmenting With Subgroups, The Latest Fad That’s Here To Stay
The announcement in June that LinkedIn will now allow subgroups was an attempt by LinkedIn to solve a segmenting problem. Groups are where you can find a lot of the action happening on LinkedIn and there are over 350,000 of them to join. As the number of people joining groups continues to grow, so does the clutter. Subgroups are now allowing group members to segment and drill down within a topic and speak about a focused area that is important to them.

The eMarketing Association Network labels itself as the “largest and most active marketing group” and is approaching 150,000 members. At the time of this post (August 2009), they have successfully formed four subgroups that have active members communicating about segmented topics: Social Marketing (523 members), Search Engine Interest (377 members), eMail Marketing (359 members) and the eMarketing Event Group (184 members).

Companies Get On LinkedIn, Go Crazy and Win
Many companies create their own groups on LinkedIn to do things like build a strong community of customer advocates, listen to customer concerns or discover new business and product development opportunities. Subgroups also create opportunities for you or your organization to find and interact with specific targets or customers more easily. Subgroups will allow you to demonstrate a specific expertise that can lead to opportunity or heighten the level of dialog you have with your customers by giving them an engagement area that supports their interests.

Another great opportunity that subgroups present is in contacting the owner of an already popular group and leading the charge in creating a new relevant subgroup that supports your company’s expertise or goals. Posting messages about the subgroup in the main group area will notify those with an interest in the topic that they have a new, segmented place, to post articles & have dialogs.

LinkedIn can be a useful tool for your business. However, like anything else, you must work at it. The companies who have found the best results are those who are the most active in a variety of tactics on LinkedIn such as groups, feeding your blog onto your profile, posting SlideShare presentations and taking part in LinkedIn Q&A.

Keep Your Eye On The Target
Customers want segmenting. However, in order for your company to be successful in its marketing efforts, it’s important to understand who your targets are and develop a strategy to market to them uniquely. Do you know what your ideal target truly looks like? Do you know your true market penetration in that channel? Once you have done that, you can then begin to look to increase the number of targets you are interacting with.

With everyone so focused on deploying social media regularly for “continued exposure,” don’t miss the point. Even in today’s new media landscape, if you don’t understand who your target customers are and how to engage in dialogs with them, your great writing skills and relevant messages are the tree in the forest that no one heard fall.