Target Marketing

Available with Business Analyst license.

Target Marketing involves understanding your customers and market area by dividing them into segments. Specifically, Target Marketing uses Esri Tapestry Segmentation to classify neighborhoods into segments based on demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. These segments label neighborhoods with descriptive names such as Urban Chic and Laptops and Lattes. For example, Urban Chic describes a population that is made up of mostly prosperous married couples living in older suburban enclaves. Understanding the characteristics of your market area helps you better understand who your customers are and how to effectively reach them. Target Marketing can also help you identify new markets containing population clusters of demographically similar consumers with comparable lifestyle and spending patterns.

Note:

Target Marketing is supported only with locally installed Business Analyst data included with the ArcGIS Business Analyst Professional license and contains segmentation data. Esri specifically uses Tapestry Segmentation, but other segmentation systems, such as PRIZM, are also supported. Target Marketing is not supported with ArcGIS Online or ArcGIS Enterprise.

Target Marketing Wizard

The Target Marketing Wizard provides a guided workflow to analyze your customers using segmentation. The workflow will guide users through four key steps:

  1. Create a customer profile.
  2. Create a market area profile.
  3. Analyze the profiles and create a target group.
  4. Map the results.

Creating profiles

Segmentation profiles are key to Target Marketing. A segmentation profile identifies the population, based on segmentation data—for example, Esri Tapestry Segmentation data. There are two types of profiles created by the Target Marketing Wizard: customer profiles and market area profiles. The workflow allows you to either create a new profile or use an existing profile that was created in a previous analysis.

A customer profile, also referred to as a target profile, identifies the segments that represent your customers. Each point location (customer point) is assigned to one or more segments.

If your customer data has information such as sales or number of visits, it can be used as volume information. So instead of only total counts, each segment will also contain total sales or total number of visits in its calculation.

A market area profile, also referred to as a base profile, identifies the segments that represent your market area. The market area is used as a base to compare the customer profile. A market area is used to analyze how well you are attracting customers from each segment. By default, the market area is defined by the current map extent. However, any polygon can also be used to define the market area. The size of the market area affects your analysis.

Depending on the segmentation system being used—for example, Esri Tapestry Segmentation—the segmentation counts are based on either population or households.

Analyzing profiles

After creating the segmentation profiles, the next step is to analyze the profiles using a Four Quadrant Analysis chart. The Four Quadrant Analysis chart plots the segments based on Index (y-axis) and Percent Composition (x-axis) values. You can manually update the Index and Percent Composition values from the text box or click and drag the x- or y-axis, adjusting which segments fall into each of the four quadrants. Using this chart, you can identify Core, Developmental, Monitor, and Niche customers. The quadrants and segments are used to create targets and a target group.

Four Quadrant Analysis pane with demographic information

Four-quadrant analysis, using the default Index value (110) and Percent Composition value (4 percent), places segments into one of four quadrants:

  • Core customers—Segments that make up 4 percent or more of your customers and index at 110 or greater.
  • Developmental customers—Segments that make up 4 percent or more of your customers but have index values that are less than 110.
  • Niche customers—Segments that make up less than 4 percent of your customers and have an index value of 110 or greater.
  • Monitor customers—Segments that make up less than 4 percent of your customers and have index values of less than 110.

The Four Quadrant Analysis chart analyzes the customer segmentation profile by comparing the percentage of your customers that fall in each segment to create indexes. The index for each segment measures the percent of customers against the percent of people in the market area. An index above 100 means that you are attracting customers from that segment at a higher rate than they occur in the market area. For example, if 10 percent of customers in the target profile and 5 percent of households from the base profile are assigned to Segment X, the index is 200 (10 percent / 5 percent * 100). This indicates that you are attracting customers from that segment at twice the rate they occur in the market area. In most cases, the base profile is the geographic area from where you draw close to 100 percent of your customers.

Targets and target groups

Target groups are collections of targets that are grouped together for further analysis. The most efficient method of creating target groups is to identify target segments based on comparison of your customer and market area segmentation profiles. Once these two profiles are created, you can use the workflow to define Core, Developmental, and Niche targets that make up your target group. These can be mapped individually as targets or collectively as a target group. The Four Quadrant Analysis chart is one method of creating targets and target groups.

Targets are collections of one or more segments that are grouped together based on similar characteristics in your customer base. Sets of targets are consolidated into a target group.

By default, Core, Developmental, Niche, and Monitor targets are included in the target group when using a Four Quadrant Analysis chart.

  • Segments containing a high percentage of your customer base and above-average indexes are your Core target. Segments that make up your Core target contain a larger percentage of your customer base than that of the market area. These segments represent loyalty and good opportunity.
  • Segments that make up a significant percentage of your customers but do not have an above-average index are your Developmental target. These segments are important because they represent a significant portion of your customers but those who are consuming your product or service at a lower rate than they occur in the market area. This is an indication of significant opportunity.
  • Segments that do not make up a significant percentage of your customers but do have an above-average index make up your Niche target. Assignment to this target indicates that you are attracting from this small pool of households relatively well. Niche segments represent opportunities when exploring new market areas for expansion and growth.
  • Segments that do not make up a significant percentage of your customers and have below-average indexes make up your Monitor target. Segments in this target represent consumers that do not purchase your product or service.

Mapping Target Marketing analysis layers

The Target Marketing Wizard contains five mapping options, each powered by a geoprocessing tool from the Target Marketing toolset.

Target map

Creates a layer that indicates whether the dominant segment for each geometry in the selected geography level falls inside or outside the set of segments that make up the target. From the workflow, the input must be an existing target, such as Core customers. If run from the geoprocessing tool, an existing target or a selected set of segments may be used as the input.

Target group layer

Creates a layer with individual thematic classes for each target in the target group. Geometries in the selected geography level receive the target’s shading if the dominant segment is equal to one of the segments in the target. For example, using the default output target group from the workflow creates a layer with four thematically shaded classes: Core, Developmental, Niche, and Monitor.

The geometries of the selected level receive shading of the individual target that the dominant segment falls within.

Target penetration map

Creates a layer indicating the percent of the base that is assigned one of the segments in the input target. The base options are defined by the segmentation dataset in use. Common options are Households or Adult Population.

If creating this type of output from the workflow, an existing target must be used as input. If accessed from the geoprocessing tool, an existing target or custom set of segments can be used.

Market potential

Generates a layer that displays expected customers by a selected geography level. Also included in the output layer is the index. If your profiles contain volume information—for example, dollars spent—expected volumes are also calculated.

Learn more about Market Potential output

Market area and gap analysis

Generates a layer that displays the gap between total customers and expected customers. Use this layer to analyze where there are concentrations of your target segmentation customers—for example, Core targets and Developmental targets. As a result, a target group that identifies your Core and Developmental targets is required for the gap analysis layer.

Learn more about Market Area Gap output

Target Marketing folder

A Target Marketing folder is added to the Catalog pane once a Target Marketing item is created or added to your project. The Target Marketing folder can be accessed in the Catalog pane by clicking Projects and then expanding the Business Analyst node. Profiles, targets, and target groups are stored within. You can create new items by accessing the geoprocessing tools from the context menu. Existing items can be added using the Add command on the context menus.

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