Whether you’re doing guerrilla marketing or advertising on the radio or television, the more accurately you target your ideal customer, the better your success will be. There are two habits most business people tend to fall into:
1. Grab all the sales you can get.
This is completely understandable and only natural for an aggressive sales person or business owner. But, what it does is distract your targeting efforts away from the customers who will ultimately be most profitable. In order to make your marketing efforts as efficient as possible, take the time to really identify your “platinum customer”. How much do they spend? What is their life-time value as a customer? What do they buy? What common thing causes them to buy? How easy are they to deal with?
Sure, grab all the sales you can get. But, if you concentrate on grabbing all the sales you can get FROM YOUR PLATINUM CUSTOMER, you will pick up sales from the rest. And, your marketing dollars will give you a better return over time.
2. Target your primary demographic.
This is a good start, but not good enough. Demographic refers to age and gender. Consider the following audiences based upon age and gender: a 35-year old female.
- She’s in a business suit with a briefcase and occupies a downtown office making 6-figures a year.
- She’s single, on a bus with two kids and food stamps.
- She’s married with three kids and she’s in a minivan full of little soccer players.
- She has orange spiked hair, a nose ring and works at an art studio.
As you can see, all of these women are the same demographic. But, they are vastly different audiences. In order to target your customer in a meaningful way, you must know more about them than age and gender. You need to know their education level and income range. You need to know what their values are. Do they value function over form like an engineer, or form over function like an artist? How do they spend their discretionary income? What are their leisure time activities?
The more you know about your best customers, the more efficiently you will be able to find them. The more accurately you will be able to deliver a meaningful message to them, and the more valuable you will become to them because you are providing exactly what they need.
-Rob Charlton
