Needs-based segmentation groups people by what they are trying to achieve, rather than by who they are or what they currently do. Instead of sorting an audience by demographics or past behaviour, it clusters them around shared underlying needs and desired outcomes. This tends to produce segments that are more stable over time and far easier to act on across product, marketing and experience.

Most segmentations group people by who they are or what they do: demographics (age, location, lifestage), behaviour (what they buy or use), or attitudes (what they say they believe). These can be useful, particularly for media targeting, but they often describe an audience without explaining what drives it. Needs-based segmentation focuses on what people are trying to achieve and why they choose one solution over another, which tends to be more powerful for shaping propositions, messaging and growth strategy.

A segment is a group within a market defined by shared priority needs, usually identified and sized through survey data and analytics. A persona is a rich, human representation of a segment that brings its goals, needs, context and behaviour to life. Put simply, the segment is the analytical group of people and the persona is the empathy-building portrait of a person in that segment that helps teams design for it.

There is no fixed number, but most workable segmentations land somewhere between four and seven segments. Too few and the groups are too broad to act on; too many and they become hard to remember, target and resource. The right number is the one that balances meaningful difference between segments with practical usability for the teams who have to act on them.

A typical Waveform programme moves through three stages. Surfacing needs uses qualitative methods like insight communities, ethnographic diaries and Jobs-to-be-Done interviews. Prioritising and segmenting uses quantitative surveys with prioritisation analytics and segmentation modelling. Building personas and activation uses segment interviews, profiling surveys and Switching Forces work. Each stage delivers value on its own, so the approach can be scoped to your priorities.

Actionability comes from designing for it from the start: segments built around needs that the business can actually address, sized for value, and brought to life with personas teams genuinely use. We also map the Switching Forces shaping each segment's choices, so the output points directly to acquisition and retention strategies rather than sitting on a shelf. The aim is a segmentation that shapes decisions, not one that simply describes the market.

In many cases, yes. Once a segmentation model is built, segments can often be assigned to existing customers or survey panels using a short set of questions, sometimes called golden questions. Where needs-based segments are less attributable is mapping to demographic data alone as people with the same demographic profile can often have very different needs.

It varies with scope and the number of stages involved. A focused project can run in 1-2 months, while a full programme spanning needs discovery, quantitative segmentation and persona development typically takes a few months. Because each stage delivers value independently, we can scope to your timeline rather than insisting on the full sequence up front.