5W in arbitrage marketing: key questions for an effective strategy

Michael Sherrington’s simple and easy-to-use 5w method is based on five key questions, each question beginning with the letter W: what, who, why, when, and where. With the help of the methodology, audience segmentation allows you to divide groups “by interest”

Why do you need to segment your audience?

Offering the same product to everyone is expensive and completely ineffective; people think differently and pay attention to your product under different circumstances. The motivation of the audience at the ages of 25 and 50 will be completely different.

That’s why your unique selling proposition (USP) for each group (segment) should be different. Advertising creatives, text, offers – all of this is created depending on the audience segment you want to sell your product to.

Here is a list of what 5w segmentation will give you:

• the opportunity to offer the product to the right customer;
• understand interesting sales channels;
• see additional benefits
• understand how to improve the product for a particular segment;
• and other aspects that will contribute to the successful existence of your product.

Pros and cons of the 5W methodology

Any audience segmentation method has its strengths and weaknesses. Segmentation by the 5W method is no exception. It has both important advantages and very serious disadvantages. Therefore, you should weigh the pros and cons before using it. After all, in some cases, Sherrington’s experience may simply not work as expected.

Advantages of the technique:

• the offer more accurately matches the user’s request and, as a result, attracts them more effectively;
• the cost of a lead is reduced because the ad is seen only by people with an already-formed need;
• advertising becomes less annoying because it targets the most interested audience segment.

The disadvantages of the methodology are that it is not always possible to hit the target audience the first time, and further fine-tuning is often required. In addition, segmenting the target audience using 5w can take quite a bit of time. Especially if you have a lot of different products in your ad campaign.

The most important drawback of the methodology is that if you make a mistake at the beginning of audience segmentation, inaccuracies will only accumulate further. Therefore, you will have to refine segments and adjust them frequently and actively.

Conclusion

The 5w methodology (by Mark Sherrington) is an extremely effective tool for modern business, which, if used correctly, can qualitatively improve sales performance and increase audience loyalty. With this method, you can

• tailor the content on your website to a specific audience to increase engagement and conversion rates;
• more competently customize the filtering of content and products on the site, taking into account the interests and needs of the target audience
• create and fill in better landing pages for each subgroup of your target audience using original design, USP, calls to action, etc;
• prepare and launch more personalized and effective email or SMS campaigns;
• create lists of personalized product recommendations for different segments of your target audience;
• expand the semantic core and thereby attract more search traffic to the site;
• cut off non-target audiences and thus significantly save on advertising.