Choosing your customers

- or would you rather they chose you?

Being able to define and pick your own customers will allow you to grow your business in the direction you want, at the pace you want and with the profit level you want.

Having them choose you will allow them to determine the direction of your business, its growth rate and profitability.

I know which situation I'd rather be in.

I'll take a dozen ...

During the Autumn and Spring terms I teach marketing strategy one day a week at Brunel University.  I never cease haranguing the unfortunate students about the importance of building a clear definition of which customers they will be targeting with their marketing plans and then defining the activities that specifically seek to recruit those customers.

It makes so much good sense.  It allows the business to focus and specialise on the very specific needs of those customers and then cost-efficiently deliver marketing programmes to attract them.

Yet, when I get back to the 'real world' of small business, I'm continually amazed at how poorly businesses adopt this approach in practice.

I spoke to a professional service provider recently and probed for his ideal client. "Oh, my service applies equally to all businesses in all industries and of all sizes, so anyone will do."

After about five minutes of gentle but determined conversation, it became clear to him that his ideal customer was actually very well defined by financial size, geography and attitude to growth.  Those organisations best matched his experience, his fee expectations and would value his contribution the most. With this realisation, he's now able to restructure the way he approaches clients and uses his specialist experiences to bring the most value to them.

It sounds simple

In the example above, the service provider had never taken the time to sit down and really think through what an ideal client would look like.  It was one of those jobs that you know you need to do, but it sounds too hard.

Well, the good news is that it isn't hard at all.  Dividing the entire marketplace into smaller groups (called segmentation in marketing-speak) according to their common need (or not) for your product/service is easy.  You don't need any research data or a supercomputer.  Just a brain, a healthy dash of common sense and some time to think it through.

It's even easier if you have been trading for a while and have one or two 'ideal' customers amongst your current customer list.

Just think ... what kind of person or business would value my offer the most, be willing to pay the kind of price that I want for it, could learn to trust me to provide it for them and that I can have reasonable access to (geographic and/or mechanical access in terms of letters, emails, phone calls).

Once you've built up a list of likely ideal customer types you will need to sanity check it.  Whilst supplying painting and decorating services to the Aga Khan must seem attractive to you, it'd take an extremely expensive marketing programme to make it happen.

What you will end up with is a short list of customer types that you'd like to have as real customers.  Then all you need to do is "go get 'em" using all of the marketing tips that you've read in the previous issues of Marketing Memorabilia.

Be warned: trying to short cut and begin marketing without carefully establishing this start point of who are your ideal customers will result in poor response levels, wasted investment and total frustration on your part.  Guaranteed.

Memorable marketing

Thinking and working pragmatically like this will help you to make your marketing work better for you in a more memorable way. This means that your target customers will be able to differentiate your products and services from those of your competitors and clearly see the value in buying from you.

If you would like some advice on memorable marketing techniques for your own business, or you know someone at another business who might need help, then please contact us. The sooner you start, the sooner you will benefit.

Segmentation

Download this handy guide which explains some of the latest thinking on how to get the best from your marketing in order to improve business effectiveness.

Written by the Chartered Institute of Marketing as part of their Shape The Agenda series, this document makes easy reading for business people of all experience levels.

Marketing Effectiveness Assessment

A free service to small businesses in the Buckinghamshire, Berkshire and Oxfordshire area, the Marketing Effectiveness Assessment delivers a professional audit of how a business is using the tools of marketing to communicate to existing and potential customers. It also includes a series of simple and cost-effective marketing activities that the business can implement immediately and at low cost.

Download the factsheet now.

Useful Links ...

Adduce Marketing

Chartered Institute of Marketing

Marketing UK (information portal)