Latest posts by shannon smith (see all)
- How to target your perfect customer - February 16, 2013
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This is without a doubt the holy grail of Internet marketing. The chasing and whooing of the elusive “perfect” customer. Billions of dollars are spent each year in this pursuit…..or is it? You might be surprised to learn, but most companies spend more money chasing the wrong clients. They use a shotgun approach in their efforts. “we want all the customers we can get.” is the way they do business. For the large corporations this might just be the best way for them, but not for you as a small business owner.
So…Who should you target?
Why the perfect customer for you of course! Each business has a perfect customer for them. This is the key for any business owner to know and understand when designing their marketing. There are four steps you have to take in order to get to that information.
- Look at your client list and look for common personality traits. – This is perhaps the most important step in the process. (hence the first position in the list :)) It is also the most difficult step as well. Each of your customers seems to be, and is, almost completely different than the next. When you look at the list you will notice the customers that are the most profitable and easiest to work with have personality point in common. Find those and writ them down. This will give you a basis to start working on your marketing and focus just on these types of customers.
- Find the trigger for the personality youidentified in the first step. – You might find once you have figured out the personality of your customer, that they all are price oriented. This would mandate a certain way of writing your copy versus someone that is more interested in social status or quality of the product or service.
- What imagery works best with this type of person? – Pictures are worth a thousand words or so they say. IF your perfect customer is product oriented, images of your product will attract their attention, but maybe kittens are more enticing for them. There is a reason kittens, children and sex sells. (it is also the reason our company is called Hippocampus Marketing) The brain needs a trigger to recall or place memories in long term memory. The Hippocampus is the filter though which all memory functions are conducted.
- The fourth step, and arguably the hardest step, finding the right mix of these elements. – Should you ad be more copy or more image? What is more important to your customer? Can what you want to say be said with just a picture, or do you need to ad some descriptive text to explain your graphic? All of these questions can be answered if you figured out step one.
With so much hinging on figuring out step one, is it any wounder why the big boys just throw money into the shotgun approach? I am not saying they waste their money, or they wouldn’t be where they are now. I mean that the old ways of marketing are still being used by the big agencies, but don’t need to be followed by the little guy. The New Media channels are much more cost effective for the little guy. With Social networking and other means of getting your word out, the old ways are going the way of the Doo-Doo.
