#006 – 2007 Summer

This issue of Tribal Voice announces the launch of the Innovation Report. The report will assist in overcoming major barriers to a creative culture.

We have a special offer for schools interested in applying for funding under the Investing in Our Schools Programme.

The feature article is on the topic of Customer Segmentation and the power it gives a business to grow and develop its customer base.

We also give an update on our Tribal Know-How Workshops, which will be kicking off in March this year.

Happy reading!

Kate Tribe
ask@triberesearch.com.au
T | +61 2 9264 4432

Tribe Research News

Innovation Report 2007 Launch

What is the biggest barrier to innovation? Your culture.

Tribe Research and The Idea Centre are launching the 2007 Innovation Report. The report is designed to assist your business in overcoming the major barriers to a creative culture:

1. Organisation size
2. Entrenched power
3. Organisational structure
4. Lack of resources

In the 2007 Innovation Report, we show you how to build an ideal creative culture that will help your business achieve its aims, show you what true leaders can achieve, and assist you in designing a workplace culture that embraces the Four Creative Tensions, which are thoroughly explored in the report.

It is our experience that what is missing in the innovation area is tangible, practical advice that managers and leaders can use to grow their businesses. The Innovation Report is designed to fill this gap.

The report will really get you thinking about your business and how to effectively balance the creativity of your staff and leaders.

Order Forms for the Innovation Report 2007 can be downloaded here.

Tribal Schools Research Package

If your school needs funding to improve the physical environment, applications are opening soon for the Investing in Our Schools Programme [IOSP]. We have developed a research package specifically for schools, to help them meet the requirement of proving “school community support” for proposed projects.

The package was developed after we helped a primary school with their successful IOSP funding application. They surveyed 139 families in the school community about various aspects of the school to identify the areas of geatest need – the aspects considered to be very important but poorly catered for. The results were used to help secure funding for a new outdoor playground with an educational component.

Click here to find out more about IOSP and how we can increase your chance of a successful funding application.

The research package can also be used for any other issue affecting the school community: students, parents, teachers and other staff.

SPECIAL OFFER: Mention Tribal Voice to receive a discount on the normal research package price for your school.

Register Now: Tribal Know-How Workshops

Tribe Research will be holding a number of Tribal Know-How Workshops in 2007.

Each workshop run by Tribe Research provides personalised advice from experienced researchers, one-on-one assistance with workshop exercises, practical tips you can implement immediately, information tailored to the needs of your organisation, and a workshop manual full of information for you to keep. Workshops can be taken over 4 evenings or in 1 full day session.

In March:

Customer feedback: for small business

• What you need to know about your customers
• Ways to discover more about your customers
• How to understand and utilise good survey design
• Appropriate data collection and recording methods
• Simple ways to analyse data for meaningful, productive results

In May:

Utilising Data [you didn’t know you had]

• What important data you have already collected
• How you can use this data to build a profile of your clients, businesses and competitors
• What data you can begin to collect so that you can further build your customer and business profile

In August:

Understanding your Members: for nonprofit organisation:

• What you need to know about your members: their needs, motivations, and perceptions of existing services
• Identifying gaps between needs and services
• How to understand and utilise good survey design
• Appropriate data collection and recording methods
• Simple ways to analyse data for meaningful, productive results

Feature Article

Customer Segmentation

What is customer/market segmentation?

Customer segmentation is a way of splitting up your customers into different groups to identify trends in these separate segments. Your business can use this information to create specific, slightly varying target markets.
Some popular divisions include:

• Age
• Gender
• Income
• Location

The information you gain from dividing your customer base can assist you in developing more effective marketing strategies. Often, when designing marketing campaigns, it is better to identify target groups of customers and/or potential customers and market more directly to smaller, more defined segments.

Perhaps you have a market that is made up of both the elderly and young adults. Do you think the same marketing strategies would work for both groups? Perhaps some of your services would apply to certain customers but not others? How can a single promotional campaign work for all your customers? Customer segmentation will allow you to design marketing campaigns that have better, more specific intentions, and will consequently achieve better outcomes for your customers and for your business.

Why should your business engage in segmentation?

• Better business development. If you know how a specific segment of your customer base behaves, you can adapt messages and promotion to target the group that will give most benefit to your business leading to increased response rates.
• Cost savings. By splitting your customers, you are better able to determine which groups are prime targets for promotional material, and which groups represent wasted marketing dollars.
• Improved Operating Efficiency. Once you are aware of which customers will react well to certain material, it is easier to direct business resources in the right direction, leading to improved efficiency.
• Improved customer satisfaction. Don’t you think your customers would be impressed by a marketing campaign that seemed to be directed right at them? Messages, services, and products that are seen to be relevant to your customers’ interests demonstrates your organisation’s value and improves customer satisfaction.

Using your resources to develop ‘effective market segmentation’

Customer data is an extremely important part of your business. But how do you obtain it? How do you utilise the data to grow your business? You don’t need much to start developing a useful strategy for market segmentation – and it doesn’t have to cost the earth either. Businesses often become concerned that there will be increased costs associated with changes to their marketing, but implementation of segmentation strategies can greatly improve your market share by utilising your current resources. Some of the basic information you may already be collecting, but not utilising is listed below, it is this sort of data that can easily be turned into useful marketing information:

• Transaction histories such as purchase date, items purchased, quantities, method of purchase [mail, internet, call in]
• Customer name, address, residence type
• Source code of how the customer was made aware of your business

A simple, inexpensive way of utilising your customer data is through use of your contact list information. Data from these sources can be extracted and analysed. You can learn precisely who needs what, and how your company can better provide it. Even a simple demographic split can help provide direction for creating effective campaign messages, purchasing media that will reach particular groups and will help identify the most appropriate media to use.

Customer Relationship Management

CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is a system designed to help businesses manage their relationships with customers. Information in a CRM program includes the capture, storage and analysis of customer information. CRM does not simply refer to a software program, but refers to a holistic approach to your business philosophy. It is important that CRM strategy considers your business’s specific situation and your customers’ needs and expectations.

Even if you have a CRM, is it being used to its full capacity?

Tribe Research was able to use market segmentation to help develop new products and services, including our Tribal Know-How Workshops. One of these workshops, Utilising Data [you didn’t know you had], offers practical advice on how to effectively utilise market segmentation in your business.

Where has your Tribe Research bag been?

Each week a new photo is displayed on our home page and we’ll email you to let you know when your photo is the current one.

Contact us and we’ll post a bag to you.