How To Target The Right Customers

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Wondering why you don’t get enough customers to buy your product/service? Maybe there is something you are doing wrong. Here in this post, I am going to teach you how to target the right customers with effective marketing tactics that you can apply to your business.

If you want this tactics to work for you, you must first target the right customer, with the right product, through the right market channel. which i will break down everything here step by step. just follow me and don’ skip any part of this article for your benefit.

I explained the 6 key steps to business marketing success in my previous post, If you have not read that, see the post then come back here to read this. It will give you a clear understanding of what I am going to teach you here.

Here are the steps to target the right customers

Finding The Right Customers

Every business, be it a product or service has its own customers. Knowing and targeting the right customers is what most businesses don’t know if this happens to be you. you are not alone anymore, I am here to help you breakthrough. I will walk you through the right process in finding profitable customers for your business using the tricks I am going to show you here.

Finding the right customer doesn’t necessarily mean finding prospects with high incomes.

You have to find customers who will let you charge more for your product or service than it costs you to produce it.

No matter how competitive the market is, you can get customers to buy from you if you do the right thing.

Have you heard of Lionel Sosa? Lionel Sosa decided to quit his job and started his own advertising and specialty promotion agency in San Antonio, Texas.

Advertising is a tough business, there are dozens of agencies fighting for business at every medium-size large company in America. But Sosa’s billings have grown more than 600 per cent in just a few years, even though his target customers were big companies such as Budweiser, Coke, and Burger King.

To find his perfect customer, Sosa segmented these customers by objective, such as motivating young adults or appealing to people over fifty.

Competition in most of these was stiff, but one area where competition was light was motivating Hispanic prospects.

That was the opening that Sosa used to develop his business.

Now, I am going to break this into two section and i will make it easier for you to understand by mentioning few companies and telling you how this companies were able to increase sales in there business.

By applying any of this tactics in your business you will get same results like this companies.

HOW TO FIND UNDERSERVED CUSTOMERS AND DETERMINE WHICH CUSTOMERS ARE PROFITABLE.

FINDING UNDERSERVED CUSTOMERS

Munsingwear, the knit shirt manufacturer best known for its penguin logo, recently came out of Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Sales are up, and profits are recovering. Munsingwear came back because it started to focus on an underserved customer segment, golf pro shops.

Those shops are always looking for high priced, high-margin products. Munsingwear provided just that, with shirts with the famous penguin logo that could be sold for $25 to $50.

Munsingwear’s target customers were golf pro shops. Golfers are the final customers, but they are hardly underserved. Hundreds of stores and catalogue houses are anxious to sell the golfer whatever he or she wants.

Golf pro shops can’t compete on price with those outlets because they are small and don’t have enough volume. So they need products that are different from those that can be bought at regular stores.

As the examples of Lionel Sosa and Munsingwear both shows, You need to keep segmenting potential customers until you find a group that isn’t getting the products or services it needs.

At first glance, both companies are competing for their target customers with dozens, if not hundreds of other companies.

How ever, both companies knew that competing in a crowded market can be suicide, so they looked at different ways to segment customers until they could find a group with unmet needs.

How To Segment Customers

Here are the list of the most common ways to segment customers.

There are hundreds of ways to segment customers, but this list will get you started.

You can segment customers by Size, Usage, Benefits, Lifestyles, Occupation, Predispositions, Distribution channels, Geography, Process, Company versus individual, Income, Social class, Personality, Family size.

I am going to explain some of these ways to segment customers. “how to target the right customers”

Size

You can segment customers by Size, there are people who have trouble finding clothes that fits them, because they are either tall, small, wide, or skinny.

This people most times need suppliers who they can always rely on any time when they need a particular cloth, they are sure to get it from the supplier.

Benefits

Some people who buy back support devices want less pain. Others engage in heavy lifting and buy a device to prevent injury. Chiropractors might want to offer these devices to generate income or to provide better patient care.

Each of these customer groups has a different set of product requirements. Frequently, most competitors concentrate their efforts on the biggest customer group, leaving the needs of some of the smaller groups unmet.

Those are the groups you might want to focus your attention on.

Lifestyle

Eddie Bauer sells high-quality products for people who want to look good, but who are also active outdoors. Therefore, Eddie Bauer needs well-constructed clothes that can take the wear and tear of hiking and camping expeditions.

Distribution Channel

Devee Philpot introduced the Junk Drawer Organizer and turned it into a million-dollar product. She targeted one market channel, organizational stores such as Lector’s, The Container Store, and Mjeir’s, to sell her product through.

She could have targeted discount stores, mail-order catalogues, home centres, or large drugstore chains. But she chose organizational stores because those stores didn’t have as many products to choose from and were actively looking for new products.

Other plastics manufacturers might sell through hardware stores, large discount stores, smaller chains such as Woolworth’s, mail-order catalogues, or a network of distributors or manufacturers’ representatives.

Usage

Industrial suppliers often segment Customers by usage. Service businesses such as engineering firms, architects, or marketing consultants also often specialize by usage.

Family Size

While many hotels cater to business travellers, not nearly as many cater to families travelling with children. So Holiday Inn responded with a promotion that lets kids travelling with their parents eat and sleep free.

Process

Service businesses and industrial suppliers can segment customers by the type of manufacturing process they use; for example, plastics manufacturers might use vacuum forming, injection moulding, rotational moulding, or hand layup processes. Suppliers can specialize in any one process.

Company Versus Individual

Some carpenters, masonry contractors, and electricians will work only for builders or large companies. Others work primarily for individuals. Each customer segment will have different needs.

Finding the right customer is important if you want to break through the communication clutter that surrounds most people. Finding the right customer lets you communicate more effectively, and with better results.

Segment your customers by broad categories that reflect the most important differences.

In some cases, you may have two or three equally important characteristics

For example: income, usage, and lifestyle could all be key points. Then use them all to segment customers.

Your goal is to find a customer group with unmet needs. You might need to divide customers into twenty groups to find one group that is underserved.

Take each customer group and determine the reasons why those customers buy. For example, people might buy because of price, a product feature, status, quality, or a variety of other factors.

Take Survey to target the right customers

The best way to find out why a group buys a certain type of product is to take a survey.

List every possible reason people might buy on a form, then ask people you know or people who have bought your product to indicate their top three considerations in buying a product.

Group the answers into categories, such as applications, personality, status, style, performance, and new technology. These categories will differ for different types of products.

From these customer categories, you want to find groups of people whose needs aren’t being met.

As an example, I’ll go through the three steps for a tattered cover bookstore in Denver, Colorado.

This store covers four floors and stocks a wide variety of books on virtually any topic-over 5,000 books in all.

1. The owner might decide that the most important way of categorizing customers is number of books purchased in a year.

A large purchaser might buy twenty-five or more books per year, a medium buyer five twenty-five books, and a small purchaser fewer than five books.

2. A Survey conducted to find out the reasons people buy books might show that high-volume book purchasers buy because they enjoy reading, want to be up-to-date on the newest technology, like to give books as presents, want an impressive-looking library, have specific problems to solve, want to understand what’s happening in the world, enjoy best sellers and want to expose their children to fine literature.

3. Using these answers, customers could be grouped into buyers of self- help books, occupation-related information, history and current events, bestsellers, and fine literature.

The owner could then see which of these customer groups weren’t able to buy the products they want. With these findings, you can then know which groups to get sales from and put more actions to increase sales from that group. Look for a group that isn’t having its needs met.

Now let me walk you through on how to identify which customers are profitable.

WHICH CUSTOMERS ARE PROFITABLE

Let me share the story of Timex company with you. Back in the 1970s, Timex lost its market position in low-cost watches to digital watches.

Yet by the late 1980s Timex was back, and was claiming one-third of America’s $1.5 million watch market.

Timex engineered this amazing turnaround by targeting young people involved in sports activities, such as running, swimming, jogging, and bicycling.

It created sports watches for each activity that helped athletes fine tune their performance.

Timex’s target had the two key characteristics of a profitable customer group: its members are easy to find, and they allow you to charge a profitable price.

Timex could find these sports enthusiasts through sports magazines aimed at runners, bicyclists, swimmers, and triathlon athletes, or by purchasing entrant lists for relevant sports events like a local community’s marathon.

Sports enthusiasts will pay top dollar for products that will help them in their hobby. Many of them consider their commitment to sports an important part of their lives, and they buy premium products for every aspect of their sport. They are ideal target customers.

Customers That Are Easy to Reach

Fortunately, marketers rarely start from scratch in trying to find and locate prospects. Instead, they have several methods available that let them reach customers easily, including dealer networks, other distribution outlets, location, specialized magazines, mailing lists, exhibits and shows, and networks of clubs and associations.)

Location

Many businesses simply reach customers through their location. People drive by, see the company’s sign, and stop in when the time is right. Drugstores, gas stations, appliance dealers, carpet stores, and small convenience stores all depend on location to generate business.

Other stores, such as Musicland and B. Dalton bookstores, depend on a mall location to reach customers. Of course, premium locations are expensive, and virtually every person driving or walking by must be a prospective customer for this strategy to pay off.

Specialized magazines

One reason Timex was able to reach its targeted customers was that there are magazines for runners, for walkers, for swimmers, and for participants in virtually every other sport.

Shows

Some businesses, especially industrial suppliers and manufacturers that supply a small retail market, such as party supply stores, have conventions, trade shows, or consumer shows that may supply 50 per cent or more of a company’s business.

Clubs and associations

Some customers, especially hobbyists, are members of clubs or other groups, such as computer bulletin boards, engineering or accounting trade groups, or coaches of youth sports teams.

The Right Customers For Your Business.

Are your targeted customers going to be willing to pay more for your product or service than it costs you to deliver it?

Let take a look at some examples here and what you should consider.

Is the purchase important to your customers?

Cub Foods has profitable stores in low-income neighbourhoods. Cub can always get a fair price because people need to eat. Products sold for hobbies, status, or adventure also represent something important to buyers and can generate a profitable price.

Lisa Kanarek started a company called Everything’s Organized. She could have targeted either people in companies or homeowners. She decided that organizing offices would be more profitable, because people were much more concerned about being efficient at work than they were about being efficient at home.

Do features dominate the purchase decision of your customers?

When you buy gas, you buy it at a convenient location that has a low price. You don’t worry about the features of gas; you just worry about the price.

When you buy products such as paint, household furnishings, or word processing equipment, however, your first concern is features. These products allow you to charge a higher price.

Some customers, such as engineers, are typically more interested in features, whereas other groups, such as accountants, are often most interested in price.

Are you meeting a specialized need?

At one time Bethlehem Steel sold steel primarily to traditional large users such as car companies.

After a brush with financial disaster, Bethlehem started concentrating on smaller customers with specialized needs, where it could add value and generate more profit.

Are customers predisposed to buy your product?

Mike Wing owns Info Plan, a company that offers customized market search for small- and medium-size businesses.

Mike didn’t target large companies, even though they had more money to spend, because they were predisposed to use big market research firms.

He could break into that market only by offer: ing extremely low prices. Small firms, in contrast, are owned by entrepreneurs who are sympathetic to another small-businessperson.

How much choice do customers have?

Prices are always higher in small towns where customers don’t have any choice. Drug companies often have to drop their prices substantially when generic versions of their products become available.

And price wars are common on airline routes that several airlines fly. You will always make more money if you alone can provide a product or service.

Conclusion

Refer to your list of customer groups. Place an X by each group for every one of the following characteristics that make customers easy to reach that it has: Readily available dealer network, Helpful distribution outlets, Highly visible locations, Availability or target specialized magazines, Access to well-defined mailing list, Currently operating shows and conventions, A large network of clubs and associations.

Go through your list again a place *by each group for every one of the following characteristics that will make customers profitable that it has: The product is important to them, Features dominate their purchase decision, They have specialized needs, They are predisposed to buy this type of product, They have few alternatives to your product.

How To Target The Right Customers For Your Business