Who are your customers and how to find them?

Look at the whole stadium:

Have you ever been to a sold-out baseball game? There are three kinds of fans: 1.) Home team, 2.) Visiting Team, 3.) People who could care less who wins.

Within the home team fans are: 1.) Fanatics, 2.) Rabid, 3.) Fair weather fans and probably a couple of more. The point is, in that stadium we can, by observation, identify some of those fans. Can't we? They wear the team colors, they cheer when the team does something good. If we are selling a product related to the home team these people are our (target market) customers. They are most likely to buy our product.

Create Groups: 

Each group of customers will be composed of people having common characteristics of some kind.

Study The Groups: 

Not every group is your target customer. Study their ages, education, household income, occupation, TV shows they watch, children and so on. What do they want or expect from your business? Where do they buy now? Why? Reduce each group to a basic customer type.

What's the competition up to:

Are your competitors successful in the marketplace? If so, Why? You must know what works in your market. Keep track of their ads. What ads and promotions do they run over and over? How do these promotions relate to your customers groups. You need to "steal" market share from your competitors.

Sort the market: 

Your primary market should be people you can reach easiest and cheapest with the greatest expectation of ROI (Return on Investment). Don't waste your time and energy on those who "might" buy from you if conditions are exactly right. Identify your best market and go after it. Secondary markets can be courted later.

Look at your top markets:

  Take the top markets and do an in depth analysis of each. What are the common characteristics we talked about above? Who do they think is the top business in your field? The more you know about each, the easier a plan to reach them will be.

What Works: 

"How did you hear about us?", works wonders in finding out what specific message brought the customer in. Studies show if people hear about your business four or more times they perceive you to be a creditable business. Find our what advertising is working for you and build on it.

Test, Test, Test: 

Any successful marketer will tell you that testing is a necessary evil of business. Make an offer, record the results. Make an offer, compare the results to the first offer. Key all your ads. A key is something to let you know where the customer saw your ad. "Ask for Don, when you call." is in the ad. All calls asking for Don came from that source. Put small code numbers in the corner of newspaper coupons. A code for a coupon in todays newspaper might be 511BDC. Which means May 11th, Bozeman Daily Chronicle. Contact a few of your good customers and ask if they saw your ad. If they didn't maybe you're advertising in the wrong place.

Make sure you can do what you can do: 

How many customers must you see to make a sale? Face to face, on the phone, by mail, or storefront. Can you deliver customer service to that number of people? If I sell fifty books a day on my website that means I have to process 50 orders a day. That's pretty easy. An hours work. If I sell 500 or 5000, then what? I need a few more computers, employees to answer the email and process all the orders. Are you ready is your business is good?

Choose Markets Carefully: 

It's not how many markets you can identify and open -- it's how many you can profitably market to and service. Markets are always going to be evolving. With the web, who knows where we're going and how fast and what it will cost. Keep on top of what's happening in your marketplace.

Have a business question for Super?

Business Tips.... for all businesses... you must have Analyst for that....

1. Know who your customers are.

a. Describe the person most likely to want or need your product.

b. Why should they want to buy your product?

c. When you know the motivation, you can target the product to the correct customer base.

d. You can't sell a product until it is defined and positioned.

Note: A pharmaceutical company shelved a cold medicine because they couldn't correct the drowsiness it produced. Someone renamed it NyQuil and sold it as a bedtime cold medicine. It became the largest selling cold medicine on the market. Just because your product is good doesn't mean it will sell. It must be positioned correctly. That's what marketing does.

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2. Promote with postcards.

a. First Class Postcard Postage is .20¢ (1¢ less than bulk mail - 20.8¢) This will be changing in January 1999

b. Postcards convey a sense of urgency to the customer. They may not read your letter but they will turn your postcard over. (You have 3 seconds to get your message across. The average time people look at an ad.)

c. Postcards will keep your mailing list clean (Address Correction Requested), First class returned and corrected free of charge by the Post Office. (Bulk Mail letter correction cost .32¢ each).

d. With a postcard, your message is out in the open. Other potential customers will see it too, not just the person it's addressed to.

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3. Create A Survey

a. Mail a survey to customers to find what motivates them to buy.

b. Where do they work? What magazines do they read? Age Group?

c. This information will tell you where and how to reach your targets.

d. Offer a gift or discount for completing the survey.

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4. Use A Two-Step Approach

a. Offer complimentary business related information to potential customers.

Step 1: Offer a free "fact sheet" to customers that shows your expertise.
Step 2: Add these customers to your mailing list and mail to them often.

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5. Say "Happy Birthday"

a. Mail greeting cards to your customers (dates from your survey #3)

b. Include a coupon or special offer or tell them about your product that they should give themselves as a gift.

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6. Team Up With Another Business

a. Share advertising costs with another company.

b. Sharing costs makes high-quality printing and larger ads affordable.

c. Can your product be teamed with another product? (Motor Oil packaged with your new funnel invention.)

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7. Be Consistent and Committed

a. Research shows a message must be repeated to be remembered.

b. Send multiple mailers to the same people.

c. If you advertise, do it where you can afford to do it often.

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8. Use The Telephone

a. Test a new idea by phone before you commit to costly promotions.

b. Response from 100 phone calls will be similar to 1,000 pieces of mail.

c. You'll receive faster results, it costs less, and you'll generate greater input and feedback.

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9. Raise Your Prices

a. Has your competition raised their prices? Maybe you should too.

b. Higher prices separate you from the crowd, and implies your product is better, an deserves a premium price. BMW does not compete with Yugos.

c. Be careful in this area. The customer must see the value of the higher price.

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10. Promote Trends or Current Events

a. Can you tie your product or service to the environment, Olympics, World Series?

b. Gain valuable credibility and interest by association with known groups.

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