The Segmentation of Barstool Sports

Hello everyone and welcome back to the blog that reviews and analyzes the marketing strategies of Barstool Sports. As I believe was mentioned in previous post, Barstool has done a great job of branching out to other major cities across the United States. Barstool Sports originally started based in Boston, run by Dave Portnoy, but has many different branches currently. These branches include New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, DMV (Washington, D.C., Maryland, and Virginia), Iowa, BarstoolU, and their newest branch, Barstool Dixie.

Barstool Sports has segmented their different franchises using geographic segmentation. There are five general criteria to be considered when segmenting a company:

1. Simplicity and cost-effectiveness of assigning potential buyers to segments
2. Potential for increased profits
3. Similarity of needs of potential buyers within a segment
4. Difference of needs of buyers among segments
5. Potential of a marketing action to reach a segment

For Barstool, the only cost to creating segments in different regions of the country is employing people in those regions to run the operation. Since it is an online based company it is very easy to group content into segments in order for viewers to find the region they are interested in. The potential for increased profit through this segmentation is clear, by grouping content and sales promotions into groups, customers can find the region they are interested in, and view merchandise pertaining to their interests. By separating Barstool's content geographically, they can recognize different groups of people who may only be interested in certain segments. For instance, people living in New York tend to view the New York page mostly, and buy merchandise relating to their sports teams. Additionally, customers in different regions do not share the same interests, and separating the segments makes the viewer experience more friendly and easy to navigate. Finally, by segmenting this way, Barstool increases the effectiveness of each marketing action made in each city.