Overview
Segmenting is the process of dividing up the entire market of foodservice accounts into smaller groups with shared, relevant attributes informed by your products and sales strategy. There are two main benefits of segmenting:
- Identify every account that would be suited to buy your products
- Create automated outreach campaigns that are personalized with account attributes
Benefits of Segmenting in Foodservice
Segmenting is a crucial process for food manufacturers to maximize their market potential. Here are the key benefits:
- Identify your entire primary market based on known successful attributes
- Discover secondary markets with high volume potential for your products
- Create specific, targeted campaign segments for personalized outreach
Methods of Segmenting
1. Using Cuisines
Filter foodservice segments by relevant cuisines:
- Primary market: Focus on directly relevant cuisines (e.g., bakery and dessert for a brownie manufacturer)
- Secondary market: Include complementary cuisines (e.g., café, coffee, deli, ice cream for brownie products)
2. Menu Item Search
Use menu search to find restaurants with relevant items:
- Direct matches: Search for your product (e.g., "brownie" or "brownies")
- Complementary items: Include adjacent or complementary menu items (e.g., cookies, croissants, ice cream)
Creating Effective Campaign Segments
Refine your search for targeted outreach:
- Combine menu items with other filters (e.g., chain size, location)
- Create specific segments for personalized campaigns
- Improve response rates with tailored messaging
How to Segment
There are many ways to segment: by menu terms, chain size, location, cuisine, sales stage and more. How you divide (and conquer) the market may be informed by your growth strategy and tactics.
For example, if you’re only going after chains in California, that would be your primary segment. Then, you could segment further by chain size (depending on your production capacity and distribution), menu, or cuisine (depending on your product and potential fit operators).
On the other hand, if you’re looking to
Menu Search
Utilize Menu search to find operators with keywords on their menu:
- Direct:
- To target operators selling brownies, search for “brownies”.
- You can also boolean strings of terms together using statements like AND and OR. If the search term has more than one word, best to put it around quotation marks.
- I.e. “gluten free” AND pizza
- Indirect:
- To capture more targets we can widen the scope by searching for “cupcakes” or “Nutella” which might be a proxy item that indicates a good fit for yours.
Filters
You can utilize filters to make your target pool as wide or narrow as you like.
- Cuisine: Besides menu search, starting with the right cuisine for your products is a great way to realize your entire market.
- Geography: Geographic filters for distribution, sales coverage or for personalization.
- Instagram: Find highest brand value targets, or for Instagram focused campaigns