Archive for Ideal client
Determining your Customer Perspective – Who do you want?
Posted by: | CommentsThis is part 1 of a 3 part series on – Determining your customer perspective – Who Do You Want As a Customer?
I understand that starting with this statement may not be the best lead in this day and age, but you do have to start your process thinking here. Start-up or an existing business has to define their ideal customer. When you do, you understand your marketing challenges so much more clearly. So, who do you want as a customer? I would assume that you would like to have one that is economical to obtain, profitable once you have them and easy to retain. We need to start with a few specific characteristics but the overwhelming issue that you must address is how that interaction with the customer happens within your company, and if you can support it in a way that is acceptable to them.
How Many Customers Do You Need? Think of the throughput of your organization and the mix of customers that you can effectively support. Can you only a support a few large customers, or many small customers? If you would like a mix of both, consider your percentage, 80/20, 70/30? Think how this would change not only your marketing but your operational structure?
What are the characteristics of your marketplace? Do you understand the market size, the growth rate(shrinking or growing), the different segments and your competition? You also need to understand the economic value of customers in each category that you may segment them in. After you determine the characteristic, ask yourself: Can you economically compete in this arena? Cost to service certain markets can be considerable; it may be a good time for a SWOT analysis?
Decision Matrix template provided by Systems2win
What specific characteristics vary among customers that affect their profitability? We try to have an ideal customer but the bottom line is that all customers are different. Some of the specific characteristics that might be different are:
-
Volume
-
Sales support
-
Inventory required
-
Distribution support
-
Credit and collection costs
-
Speed of collection
-
Engineering support
-
Order entry support
-
Field service
Maybe the most important consideration is when you consider the items that your organization values the most, do your customers value them also? It is a hard road to go if you sell your organization on the values that identify your organization and then turn around and find a customer base that disregards them. So, who do you want as a customer?
Related Posts:
Have you taken the path of your customer?
Another word for Marketing – How about Voice of the Customer?
Have you struggled defining your Ideal Client – Find out how
Machine Gun Marketing
Posted by: | Comments
I was reading Success Coaching U Blog and the other Joe wrote an article about Ready, Aim, Fire. Good headline, you already can guess what the headline is about, Target Marketing. I remembered a piece of advice I received from another Duct Tape Marketing Coach on targeting your direct mail, which I call the Machine Gun approach. For obvious reasons, I won’t disclose the source, but the following statistics were shared:
I don’t have a success story, I have a sobering story. Here it is:
Number of pieces mailed: 10,000
Response rate: 1%
Number of inquiries: 96
Number that you manage to reach by phone to qualify: 70
Cost of qualifying by phone, per inquiry: $30
Number who turn out to be qualified leads (20%): 14
Total cost of qualifying ($30 X 70): $2,100
Campaign cost of $10,000 + phone qualifying cost = $12,200
Total cost of $12,200 divided by 14 qualified leads = $871.42. In other words, you must spend $871.42 to get to each lead who needs your product or service, can afford it, has authority to buy, and is ready to buy now. Not so good for a small business….
I will call this method Machine Gun Marketing. Another method of Machine Gun Marketing is the Marketing Idea of the Week. You have an Ad Rep call on you and they have this special 3 for 2 deal. Plus, they will be attending and handing out another 1,000 pieces of whatever they are selling. Oh yeah, you will also be exclusive to your area of expertise and they will even create the ad. What a deal! But….you will have to do something by Thursday, this being Tuesday. Sounds like a great idea?
If it is not part of your overall marketing strategy, if it not targeted, and I mean really targeted, and you don’t have extra cash in your marketing budget that you were just clueless on how to spend it and you don’t have collateral material supporting it and you cannot create the ad yourself(a two-step ad, by the way), and you already know how you are going to measure it and….. I have told Ad reps, that I do not respond to this type of marketing, many have stopped calling. I wonder why…has their machine gun jammed or just ran out of bullets?
To be effective – HOW COOL does your marketing have to be?
Posted by: | CommentsI am just not sure you can make anything that is cool enough anymore to really be an eye-stopper. The only ad that I think of right away, is the Apple notebook that fits in an envelope.
After a recent presentation to a group of start-up businesses, I asked for feedback. The only negative feedback I received was that someone was really looking for that Aha moment. Or that one great thing to do in marketing that could help them jettison their product or service.
Why is that? I think inexperience marketers always wonder why little of their marketing works. They run ads, get PR and time and time again are baffled that just little works in the way of marketing. I disagree that there is not anything that works. I believe just about eve
rything works, but only just a little. The world has become so fragmented on the way it receives information that you have to reach even a very target audience in numerous ways. I think that is why building a community with your existing customers is being emphasized. If they are targeted enough and have a strong enough dependency on your product or service, you will have the ability to communicate with them.
In implementing a Duct Tape Marketing System that Aha moment comes when the customer finally discovers their Target Market/Ideal Client. Immediately after that time it seems that their core message materializes and their marketing messages start following a defined path.
Even with have a defined message, you still have to use numerous methods to reach your audience. Again, there is not one way that is going to work. But what does work is great content and linkage. You must link every single event together and build on that. Think like a spider web. Every connection you make, you must find a way to link it to another event or another instance and to another and to another. Soon you will have started to spin your web and when you start collaboration you can start tying their net into yours.
It gets a little more elaborate than this but if you are looking for that big bang from a marketing firm, I don’t think it is there. I just don’t think it can be made cool enough for you!
