YOU’RE MISSING A LOT OF CUSTOMERS! Where Do You Find Them?
By Marty Gould and Chuck Dinsmore, Data Clique
How much more effective would your marketing be if you could focus only on those people who already want to buy what you’re selling? Think of how much you would save by not marketing to those who will NEVER buy!
There’s almost always a certain segment of the market that is pre-wired to buy what you’re selling. Identifying those people is the first step in building an effective customer acquisition strategy.
To identify and reach the types of people who are most likely to become your customers, you need to know a lot more about them: how they live their lives, where they’re located, what kind of message appeals to them. You can’t hit a target if you don’t know where to aim.
Simple demographics, like age and income, don’t provide enough information. Blasting out a postcard to entire ZIP codes does not account for the differing types of people who live there because zip code boundaries are random. A person’s purchasing habits and lifestyle preferences are influenced by much more than how old they are or what ZIP code they are in. To find the information we need, we have to drill down deeper to a smaller geographical area where people share similar characteristics, like a neighborhood.
Take a moment to visualize where you live. Aren’t your neighbors a lot like you? The homes in your development were probably built all around the same time, and are all about the same size and price. That means your neighbors are likely to have similar incomes. It’s also natural for people to prefer living among those who they feel most comfortable with, so neighborhoods are often made up of people who share similar characteristics: families with children, retirees, empty-nesters, professionals, blue collar workers, and so on.
The analysis of these types of details is called geo-demographic, or Lifestyle Segmentation research, which groups similar people into categories based on their location and lifestyles. It’s used to target marketing messages specifically to the types of people who are most likely to buy what you’re selling.
Most small business owners attempt to blanket their entire communities with ad campaigns that reach as wide an audience as possible, lulled into a false sense of security by thinking, “I’m reaching everybody so I’m guaranteed to succeed.” In reality, reaching everyone with the same generalized message usually leads to missing the people you really want to reach—the one’s that are most likely to buy your product or service.
When you know the name, address, phone number and email address of every single person in your market who exactly matches the profile of your best customers and you reach out with specifically targeted messages delivered through the media channels they utilize most often, you significantly increase your chances of success.
See Lifestyle Segmentation in action by answering 5 simple questions. Find out who your best customers are, and how many perfectly matched prospects there are right in your backyard.
Try out the free, online “Missing Customer Finder” at www.findmybestcustomer.com. The whole process should take you less than 30 seconds.
By using Lifestyle Segmentation, you can find out which group of people are your best customers and what makes them different from everyone else. You’ll have a description of their habits, preferences and behaviors and you’ll know exactly how many households in your primary market that you can target, because they fit the exact same customer profile!
We know how hard it is to take the first step to change the way you’ve been approaching your marketing. Getting some useable information into your hands that you can trust, because it’s customized for your business, is going to give you confidence to start taking control of your marketing, your marketing budget, and your marketing success!
