for a company, what does it mean to "segment your customers"?

Segmenting your customers means to sort them into categories. Age, Household Income and level of education might be ways that you would segment consumers of a product. If your company sells to a business you might segment them by markets (agricultural, construction, transportation) or by title of the individual who purchases from you (accountants, human resource professionals, business owners) or by the number of employees, the state the customer is headquartered or number of computers the company owns.

When you segment your customers it can help you to develop a marketing strategy or make a sales tactic more effective. It can help you focus your product offerings to the segments that are the most profitable.

Source(s):

I have over 25 years of marketing and sales experience and own a marketing agency called Marketing Resources & Results. www.resources-results.com