Thursday, August 11, 2011
Marketing To The Right Crowd - Who's my customer?
Most small business owners can quickly tell you who their customers are. In ten seconds or less they will tell you that my customers are "schools and sports clubs", "young teen-age girls", or "whoever is hungry!" These are good answers and have probably defined who your customers are from the very beginning. But do these accurately describe just exactly who likes your services or products? Have these definitions limited your vision of who may benefit from doing business with you?
The first step in defining who your customers are is to group them by large sweeping categories. In the above examples, the business owners have done that. However, most stop with just one or two categories. Try pushing the envelope by seeing how many ways you can group your clients - by age, location, special interests, gender, type of organization, etc. These will serve as your high level categories.
Next, for each category try to determine "why" this group buys from you. Is it price? Speed of delivery? Quality of product? As you do this, I suspect you will gain deeper insight into why your customers buy from you and not the guy down the street!
At this point it would be good to point out that you may discover "why" some are NOT buying from you. The heart and soul of doing business is to somehow meet the customer's need. It is the customer who determines what the need is and what will satisfy it. The business owner's job is to find out what is needed and fill that need.
Finally, armed with this information, look at your marketing efforts. Is your advertising targeting the right groups? Does it reinforce the "why" they like to buy from you? If you are like most small business owners, you probably have some adjustments to make. In fact, it would be good to go through this exercise periodically to make sure you are still on track.
Marketing to the right crowd is vital to doing business. By identifying and categorizing your target market you will be ensuring you are selling to the right group. Nothing is harder than trying to "sell snow to Eskimos"!
The first step in defining who your customers are is to group them by large sweeping categories. In the above examples, the business owners have done that. However, most stop with just one or two categories. Try pushing the envelope by seeing how many ways you can group your clients - by age, location, special interests, gender, type of organization, etc. These will serve as your high level categories.Next, for each category try to determine "why" this group buys from you. Is it price? Speed of delivery? Quality of product? As you do this, I suspect you will gain deeper insight into why your customers buy from you and not the guy down the street!
At this point it would be good to point out that you may discover "why" some are NOT buying from you. The heart and soul of doing business is to somehow meet the customer's need. It is the customer who determines what the need is and what will satisfy it. The business owner's job is to find out what is needed and fill that need.
Finally, armed with this information, look at your marketing efforts. Is your advertising targeting the right groups? Does it reinforce the "why" they like to buy from you? If you are like most small business owners, you probably have some adjustments to make. In fact, it would be good to go through this exercise periodically to make sure you are still on track.
Marketing to the right crowd is vital to doing business. By identifying and categorizing your target market you will be ensuring you are selling to the right group. Nothing is harder than trying to "sell snow to Eskimos"!
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