Wedding market segments and targets

The wed­ding mar­ket is huge: over 200,000 mar­riages a year in Eng­land and Wales (source: gov­ern­ment stats). As a wed­ding sup­plier you’d be naïve to try and sell to all of those brides. And you can save a for­tune on adver­tis­ing if you’re selec­tive: It’s always eas­ier to seg­ment the wed­ding mar­ket, and to tar­get a par­tic­u­lar segment.

Where to start seg­ment­ing the wed­ding market

All you have to do is men­tally iden­tify a few groups of brides: it’s dead sim­ple. Dif­fer­ent ways to seg­ment the wed­ding mar­ket are:

• Demo­graph­i­cally: into groups by bud­get, by reli­gion, by age etc.
• Geo­graph­i­cally: into groups by phys­i­cal location
• Behav­iourally: into groups based on per­son­al­ity, lifestyle, social class etc.

For exam­ple, you could iden­tify a seg­ment of alter­na­tive brides who are not reli­gious and live in Lin­colnshire, if that suits your business.

What do you need mar­ket seg­ments for?

Defin­ing the par­tic­u­lar mar­ket seg­ments to tar­get can really help you focus on your busi­ness and mar­ket­ing strategies.

If your busi­ness will tar­get one or more mar­ket seg­ments (as it should, with time) you can develop a unique strat­egy for each one. This will save you money on mar­ket­ing com­mu­ni­ca­tions and can poten­tially allow you to charge a pre­mium price for your highly tar­geted products.

Exam­ple mar­ket seg­ments & tar­gets for a wed­ding sta­tionery business

Seg­ment 1 — Brides with £20k+ bud­gets who are high earn­ers, enjoy the arts and fash­ion, and are aged between 25 and 35

Strat­egy for seg­ment 1 — Designer bespoke let­ter­press invi­ta­tions, on trend con­tem­po­rary designs, sophis­ti­cated. Pre­mium prices, high adver­tis­ing spend (You & Your Wed­ding) and inter­na­tional distribution

Seg­ment 2 — Brides with £10-15k bud­gets who are medium earn­ers, enjoy mag­a­zines and pop­u­lar cul­ture, aged between 20 and 25

Strat­egy for seg­ment 2 - “Make your own” designer wed­ding sta­tionery, on trend with con­tem­po­rary, fun and funky designs. Medium price range with tac­ti­cal dis­counts, low adver­tis­ing spend (Wed­ding Chaos) and nation­wide distribution

Can you iden­tify your own mar­ket segments?

If you can iden­tify dis­tinct seg­ments in your wed­ding mar­ket it will help you tar­get your prod­ucts, prices, pro­mo­tional strate­gies and dis­tri­b­u­tion more effectively.

1. Writ­ing down the seg­ments you’re tar­get­ing and your mar­ket­ing mix strate­gies will help your wed­ding busi­ness to achieve its goals.
2. Start with a blank page and iden­tify a cou­ple of mar­ket seg­ments based on demo­graph­ics, loca­tion and behaviour.
3. Next to each seg­ment write a very basic strat­egy using the key con­cepts of prod­uct, price, pro­mo­tion and place.
4. Then have a look at your exist­ing mar­ket­ing strat­egy. Should you vary it a lit­tle for the dif­fer­ent seg­ments you’ve identified?