How to Prioritize Customer Segments

How do you and your teams synthesise and select which customer needs or pains to progress in your #product, #design, or #innovation projects? Imagine you've just completed some great customer discovery research, including observing, interviewing and being the customer. You've built some good empathy for who your customers are, what is important to them, what pains them, and what delights them. Then you unpack your findings into some form of empathy map, and you've got 100s of sticky notes everywhere. You've then started to narrow them down to the most promising and interesting observations, but this still leaves you with a sizeable collection and you want to add some rigour to your intuition on which ones to take forward first. Well, here are 3 different methods that I’ve used and iterated over the years: Number One – The Opportunity Scale This first one is the simplest and is inspired by how Alexander Osterwalder et al rank jobs, pains and gains in their book Value Proposition Design, 2014. As a team, you take your short list of observations from your empathy map and rank them from how insignificant/moderate to how important/extreme the need/pain is for the customer with the most important/extreme being prioritised to explore further first. Number two – The Opportunity Matrix A The opportunity matrix increases the rigour and confidence of your prioritizing by adding ‘strength of evidence’ as another dimension. Strength of evidence at this stage of journey can be determined by the number and type of data points. For example, if you heard from several customers that a pain point was extremely painful then you could be more confident this was worth solving than one highlighted by only one customer. Likewise, observing customers do something provides stronger evidence than customers saying they do something. Here you prioritise the most important needs with the strongest evidence first. Something to watch out for is when your team selects an observation that has strong evidence but isn’t that important of a need or pain to customers. Teams can be blinkered by numbers and end up over-investing in time wasting-opportunities. Number three – The Opportunity Matrix B The third method swaps out evidence for fulfilment of the need - how satisfied are customers with their ability to fulfil the need/solve the pain with the solutions they use today? By matching this with the importance of the need/pain we can select those observations that we understand to be the most important and unmet for our customers. You can then overlay the strength of evidence across this ranking to make your final selection even more robust. And to take it to a whole new level and really de-risk your selection you can test your prioritised observations, written as need statements, in quantitative research with customers. This is something that Antony Ulwick shares in his book Jobs To Be Done, 2016. I hope you find these methods useful. #designthinking #humancentreddesign

As founders, we're bombarded with advice: "Know your customer!" "Listen to your audience!" But amidst the buzzwords, a crucial question lingers: how do we truly understand what matters to our customers, beyond the surface-level preferences and fleeting opinions? My journey as a founder has been a constant dance between chasing "customer feedback" and uncovering the deeper desires fueling that feedback. I've learned that listening isn't enough; we need to actively decode and prioritize what truly resonates with our users. Enter the Customer Value Compass: Step 1: Chart the Terrain: 1. Gather diverse data: Collect feedback through surveys, interviews, user observations, social media sentiment analysis, and support tickets. 2. Identify recurring themes: Analyze the data for common threads, challenges, and desires expressed by your customers. Don't get bogged down in individual details; look for patterns. 3. Categorize by impact: Segment your identified themes into two categories: "surface-level preferences" and "core value drivers." Surface-level preferences: These are fleeting opinions, often influenced by trends or personal experiences. They can provide valuable insights for specific features or campaigns, but shouldn't define your core offering. Core value drivers: These are deeply held needs, desires, and motivations that underpin customer behavior. These are the true north stars you need to align with. Step 2: Calibrate the Compass: 1. Dig deeper into core value drivers: Conduct in-depth interviews, focus groups, or user testing to truly understand the "why" behind these themes. 2. Prioritize based on impact: Not all core value drivers hold equal weight. Assess their prevalence, intensity, and alignment with your business goals to determine which ones deserve the most attention. 3. Validate with data: Look for quantitative evidence to support your qualitative findings. Analyze usage data, conversion rates, and customer satisfaction metrics to ensure your understanding aligns with actual behavior. Step 3: Navigate with Confidence: 1. Align your product and strategy: Use your Customer Value Compass to inform product development, marketing messages, and customer support initiatives. 2. Communicate with clarity: When making changes or introducing new features, explain how they address the core value drivers you've identified. 3. Continuously iterate: The Customer Value Compass is a living document. Gather new data, conduct regular reviews, and be prepared to adjust your understanding as your customer base and market evolve. Remember, the Customer Value Compass is not a destination, but a journey. By prioritizing what truly matters to your users, you build a foundation for sustainable growth, loyalty, and success. So, silence the buzzwords, listen deeply, and let your customers guide your voyage. #FoundersJourney #CustomerInsights #DecodingValue #ValueCompass #CustomerCentricity #BuildingForUsers

I once opened a client’s GA4 account and saw 42 custom segments. Forty-two. Every channel, every micro-behavior, every theoretical funnel stage, broken into separate views. It looked impressive until we realized no one was using them to make a decision. Here’s the danger: over-segmentation creates the illusion of insight. But in reality? It often paralyzes decision-making. ➞ Here’s what I help clients do instead: 1. Build meaningful segments based on shared behaviors: ↳ Combine user traits with action patterns: Engaged Pricing Viewers (users who viewed pricing + triggered a CTA). ↳ Avoid segmenting by single actions - those lead to noise, not trends. 2. Tie each segment to a business decision: ↳ Ask: What would we do differently if this group grew or shrank? ↳ If the answer is unclear, the segment isn’t useful - it’s decoration. 3. Limit active segments to a small, high-value list: ↳ In most GA4 setups, 5–7 audience segments are enough to drive 80% of reporting clarity and campaign targeting. ↳ The rest? Archive or delete. → You don’t need more segments. → You need more strategic ones. → Because when everything is segmented, nothing is prioritized. As a solo consultant, I’ve seen over-segmentation create more confusion than clarity. The best teams I’ve worked with don’t track everything - they track what matters most. How many GA4 segments do you actually use in your decisions? A) 0–5 B) 6–15 C) More than 15 (and I’m scared to delete them)

🚨 Thinking of going up or down market? Read this first. 🚨 Over the years, I’ve heard it countless times: "Our growth is stalling, so we're pivoting to a new adjacent market." As someone who’s carried a revenue target since 2005, I always get nervous hearing this. Why? Because when companies shift markets, they often assume their revenue problems will magically disappear. Spoiler alert: they don’t. Take a CRO I recently spoke with. His company went upmarket, crushed their bookings targets, and celebrated… until churn hit. Hard. Twelve months later: -He lost his job. -The churn caught up with the CS leader. -Eventually, the CEO faced mass layoffs. When you target a new market, chances are you are making some big assumptions: -Your product solves the problems better in the adjacent market. -The new market is growing faster. -You'll see less competition. But how often do we validate these assumptions? Here’s a thought: Before pivoting to solve growth challenges, look within. If your company has scale (say, 200+ customers), your customer data probably tells a clearer story: 1️⃣ <20% of your customers drive >80% of your growth. 2️⃣ >60% of your customers are stagnant post-acquisition. 3️⃣ ~20% of your customers are contracting, with many failing to pay back the initial acquisition costs. Now, imagine this: -Of your fastest-growing customer segments, there is a large volume of similar prospects (thing big TAM/SAM). -Yet, 80% of your open pipeline is with prospects outside these high value segments. -Worse, a large percentage of these fast-growing segments are likely not being targeted by your sales and marketing teams. The overlooked growth strategy? 🚀 Niche down. Double down..before you go up or down market! Focus on the segments where you’ve already won and where product-market fit is proven. Here’s the playbook: ✅ Identify the attributes of your fastest-growing customers. ✅ Create a unified target account list, focusing sales and marketing on attracting and expanding these segments. ✅ Just as important: know which segments to avoid. These are the ones dragging down your GTM unit economics. The path to growth isn’t always upmarket or downmarket—it’s often right in front of us. What’s stopping you from niching down? Let’s talk in the comments. 👇 #GrowthStrategy #CMO #CRO #ProductMarketFit #ABM #AlignICP