What are the best practices for segmenting global clients by industry, size, and location?

Segmenting global clients enables tailored offerings, enhances relevance, optimizes resources, improves satisfaction, facilitates expansion, measures performance, and maintains competitiveness by addressing diverse needs and preferences effectively.

Segmenting global clients involves grouping them by shared characteristics like industry, size, location, or behavior. This allows you to understand their unique needs and challenges, tailor your services, and create targeted solutions. It also helps prioritize resources, optimize pricing strategies, and enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty, leading to more efficient operations and stronger client relationships.

In my experience, segmenting by NAICS codes requires identifying the key products or services segments for each of the global clients and mapping them with the closest NAICS category that covers most of the client’s business segments. This is because global clients usually have business units that create distinctly different products and/ or services, and many business units even serve different customer segments.

Segment clients by industry using classifications like SIC or NAICS, or create your own based on expertise. Use market reports, industry associations, and trade publications to understand each segment's trends and needs, enabling you to offer relevant solutions.

Segmenting by revenue size is a commonly used strategy. Purchasing power, Organizational structures and decision making processes are very different across the size groupings. Fortune 500 and Forbes Global 2000 rankings are very commonly used to identify the largest clients across various industries. Even within these lists, larger clients attract a lot of focus from competitors as well. At the lower end of the spectrum are usually the Industry disruptors - so, it is important to keep an eye on small, high growth market entrants.

One effective approach I’ve used is to create tiered segments like small, medium, and large, each with tailored strategies and service levels. For example, I treat large clients with personalized, high-touch services while offering more streamlined solutions to smaller clients. I also gather data from sales and customer service interactions to refine these segments continually. This helps me better understand their needs and adjust our approach to ensure that each client receives the most relevant and effective support. By segmenting clients this way, I’ve been able to optimize resource allocation and improve overall client satisfaction.

Segmenting clients by size helps tailor services to their operational scale and complexity, and adjust pricing and delivery. Use metrics like revenue, number of employees, market share, or growth rate. You can also consider qualitative factors, such as decision-making authority, innovation level, or customization needs.

Segmenting global clients by industry, size, and location is essential for effective targeting and personalized service. When segmenting by industry, I identify key industries that benefit most from my product. For size, I categorize clients as small, medium, or large enterprises, tailoring my approach to their specific needs. Location segmentation requires understanding regional differences and market conditions. For example, I adjust my strategies for clients in North America versus Asia due to varying cultural and economic factors. This structured segmentation helps me address the unique needs of each client group, enhancing my overall business strategy.

Segmenting clients by location helps you address geographic, cultural, and legal differences that impact their preferences and expectations. Use criteria like country, region, city, or time zone, and gather additional insights through surveys, interviews, or feedback to adapt your communication and relationship-building strategies effectively.

It is important to frame a macro environment view for each of the client business segments. For example, the drivers for services needed by Financial services arm of an Automotive company will be very different from the pressures that the same Auto company’s manufacturing division would have. This understanding helps in creating a deeply aligned client strategy and execution model that maximizes the outcome for the firm.

Use segmentation data to enhance client management by creating client personas for each segment, developing tailored service portfolios, and implementing pricing strategies that reflect the value provided. Design communication plans that align with client preferences and establish relationship management processes to build trust and loyalty within each segment.

We have many ways to group our clients, like by what industry they're in, how big they are, where they are, what services they need, and even how they behave. But before we get into all that, we need to decide what we're trying to achieve. Are we focusing on a certain place, the best companies, or a specific type of industry? Once we know what we're aiming for, we can come up with smart plans to divide our clients and reach out to them. These plans should keep up with changes and make sure we can adapt quickly.