How to Pick Your Customer
Customers can be traders, tourists, investors, market intermediaries, your targeted base, your advertisers and you.
In the business of selling and advertising, to define and approach customers in very broad terms such as this can spell disaster. Any good advertiser will tell you that to run an ad targeting a broad market base rarely produces results.
The game is segmentation. The aim is to pin down specifics so that your advertising and promotional effort is addressed to a specific segment that your product will get its most desired result.
A business that remains viable are those that clearly identifies who the customers are, what are their priorities, what do they need, the decision influencers, the decision process that is involved, the where what and why they buy. In a capsule, it is the management of a product to cater to the satisfaction of a market that is influenced by social forces, cultural definitions and markets. Understanding the psychographics and demographics of your customer is crucial.
For example, a seller must taper his sales pitches and tactics from an individual buyer to business buyer. An institutional buyer, a bulk/wholesale buyer, a buyer on the internet. These buyers have different requirements and have different demands and expectations to be addressed in order to effectively sell. These factors include income, rank, position, and attitudes at handling risks.
This is not as complicated as it sounds. Marketing people profiles their customer before offering a product or service. Then they offer that product to a target that they know will be addressed by that particular need. They prepare well in advance using a table of segmentation variables. Typical of the table will look is this:
Demographics: Age group (below 6, 6 to 12, 13 to 19, 20 to 30 etc), sex (male or female) , family size (1, 2, 3, 4, 5+), family life cycle (young, young single, married no children, single with children, married with children), Income bracket (low, medium and high), Occupation (technical, managers, professionals, craftsman, farmer, operatives etc.), Education (grade school, high school, college, post graduates etc.), Religion (Christian, Muslim, Jewish etc.) Race, Nationality, social class (A, B, Upper C, C, lower C. upper-lower, lower-lower),
Geographic: Region (Pacific mountain, West, North Central etc.), County size, City population size, Density (urban suburban, rural), Climate (northern, southern).
Psychographic: Compulsiveness (compulsive, non-compulsive), gregariousness (extrovert, introvert), autonomy (dependent, independent), Conservatism (radical, liberal, conservative), Ambitiousness (authoritarian, democratic), Leadership (leader, follower).
Buyer behavior: Usage rate (nonuser, light user, medium user, heavy user), readiness stage (unaware, aware, interested, intending to try, initial try, regular customer), benefits sought (Economy, status, dependability), end use, brand loyalty (heavy, none) and marketing factor sensitivity (quality, price, service, and advertising and promotion sensitivity.
These factors are being applied because this will predict the inclination of consumer customers. Marketers apply these knowledge in picking out their customers because without it, the take off of the product will be left to chance by factors like self conception, lifestyle, personal predilections, reference groups, family and role models, cultural and social differences all of which makes it very hard for the marketer to predict and influence the customer to be drawn to his product and business.
Effective selling is leaving nothing to chance. It is trying to control the vagaries of human factor and to level out market influences. The more costly the product, the less familiar the seller, the more emotional involvement is present in the buying task.
If you have tried and experimented on materials and ideas, and the market response is lukewarm at best, it may be because the market you are trying to hit is not really specifically addressed and communicated to.
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