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The promotion of your new product is critical. And this is where marketing generally gets confused with sales. Promotion deals with how to get your product and its message out to the public, ideally in front of your competitors. Promotion is where marketing creates value to customers, or even the perception of value.

In promoting your new product, you must think about segmentation. For example, in the previous discussion topic, it was determined that the initial target market was college students. This is an example of segmentation, which is one of marketing’s primary concerns. To whom will we direct our promotional efforts? Do you think the above device is attractive to more than college students (high school students, working professionals)?

Segmentation can assist tremendously with the promotion of your product. Segmentation allows one to identify groups of potential users of your product. Here are several ways we can segment the market (and there are probably more):

Geographic: different areas of the country may have different tastes. Heavy winter clothing in February is fine in the Northeastern United States, but buyers in Florida will not have much use for it, even in February. If a firm does business overseas, then preferences will be different in color, texture, and marketing. For example, certain colors in North America symbolize happiness or purity; those same colors in other countries have the opposite meaning. Doing business overseas means one must be familiar with that country’s culture, history, ethnicity, and general preferences.

Demographic – Your target market may be grouped by gender, age, income, race, and other factors. For example, Ferrari considers high (very high)-income people their primary target. Tickets to professional sports venues can appeal to a variety of income groups. Box seats, or those closest to the home plate, will charge a premium. Lower cost seats will be in the upper reaches of a stadium, further away from the home plate. Everyone is going to the ball game, but where you wish to sit determines your cost.

Behavioral – Some groups of people will consider a product in a variety of perspectives. Some of these approaches will be similar. For example, everyone uses milk, but people have different perspectives. Those who are diet conscious may prefer to buy 2% (less fat); children might prefer chocolate milk, those who are vegan will prefer soy milk. Your target market can be divided into multiple subsets.