Gain new insights into how the seven segments uniquely relate to the four Ps of marketing.

In 2016, GMAC partnered with IPSOS, a global market research firm, to conduct a global segmentation study of graduate management education (GME) candidates with the goal to positively influence the way business schools identify, target, and market to prospective students. The outcome of the study was the establishment of seven global candidate segments based on what motivates them to pursue a GME and what motivates them to apply to a specific school, as detailed in the 2016 white paper Beyond Demographics: Connecting With the Core Motivations of Business School Candidates.

This week, GMAC Research published its latest publication related to segmentation: the Global Candidate Segmentation Playbook.

Based on the data and insights captured through the original segmentation study, GMAC developed a seven-question segmentation tool that quickly and accurately identifies which of the seven segments a candidate best fits. Throughout 2017, GMAC Research applied the segmentation tool to nearly 10,000 mba.com registrants as a part of the mba.com Prospective Students Survey, uncovering new levels of understanding into the segments. In the segmentation playbook, data from the survey is laid out in easy-to-read infographics, organized by candidates’ best fit segment and arranged around the four Ps of marketing—product, place, price, promotion. This provides new levels of insight into how the seven segments uniquely relate to the various facets of these four key elements of an effective program marketing strategy.

Included in the summary of each segment in the playbook is “your go-to play”—a jumping off point for users to adapt the segmentation insights into customized messaging for various communication channels. Throughout the infographics, data points in which a given segment is notably over or under indexed compared with the average candidate are specially noted. For example, under the category of price, Global Strivers rank financial considerations as less important in their school selection compared with the average candidate. Next to this data point, a “(-)” denotes this.

The digital version of the playbook is now available for download at gmac.com/segments. Printed copies will be available this week at GMAC Annual Conference in Boston, MA.