Targeting With a Laser and Not a Water Balloon

With this knowledge, you will have identified your perfect customers into groups, which will enable you to target them based upon their needs and not your products. This means you offer solutions not stuff. Everything you do in terms of developing new products or services, delivering your message over various marketing channels and hiring the right staff in the right place will evolve around this identification. Let's be certain we are on the same page by coming to an understanding.

Being successful in business begins by identifying your target. I know this sounds incredibly elementary, but it is what we need to know, in order to build the business beyond where we are. Every organization has a typical customer and a consequential lifecycle. But few have a perfect customer, or groups thereof, they have absolutely identified outside of their own mind.

Building a profitable customer relationship requires an understanding of a two sided proposition. The two sides to this relationship are quite simply, your understanding of your customer's needs and the perception they have of you or your organization. Furthermore, it is critical to realize that quantity rarely trumps quality. You need to know what your customers' needs are, how they evolve, why they have chosen you and what those customers are contributing to the success of your company. Not knowing this in detail will be very expensive. It is great to know about our customer's family, outside influences and extracurricular interests but that isn't what I mean here.

Your perfect customer can first be broadly defined by answering these two questions:

· How does what you offer solve their problems and add to achieving their objectives?

· Why would they need, what you offer, from you and not your competitor?

Then you need to narrow that list by identifying exactly who fits this mold today:

· Where your customers are geographically located.

· What products or services does each of them, derived from the previous set of questions, buy from you now? How often do they repeat that purchase?

· What does it cost you to acquire a new and nearly duplicate copy?

· What are they worth to you on an annual basis?

Your newly identified or refined perfect customer needs to be listed as specific people or businesses. You must be able to identify them by such narrow target data as income level, occupation, gender, location, questions they typically ask and the benefits they seek for the problems you can solve.

Do You Have a Mobile Strategy?

There are 6.8 billion people on the planet. 5.1 billion of them own a cell phone, but only 4.2 billion own a toothbrush (EZtexting.com). This is an astounding statistic and gives you an idea of why so many businesses are jumping to mobile as a way to reach their customers. There are a lot of reasons businesses should have a mobile strategy.

Growth

The worldwide smartphone market grew 54.7% year over year in the fourth quarter of 2011 (IDC). There is no doubt that the sales of mobile devices have been pretty amazing. With this fast growth taking place it is no wonder that people are rushing to beat out their competitors by creating mobile products and adapting current products to meet their customers mobile needs. There are more mobile phones on the planet than there are TVs (EZtexting.com).

Personalization

Mobile coupons get 10 times the redemption rate of traditional coupons (Borrell Associates). Mobile is able to provide a more interactive and targeted experience than any other channel because consumers have to opt-in to programs to get offers and alerts. The ability to target messaging with mobile means that consumers get the information that they decide they want and this leads to successful marketing. 70% of all mobile searches result in action within 1 hour (Mobile Marketer).

Accessibility

91% of all U.S. citizens have their mobile device within reach 24/7 (Morgan Stanley). That means that you have a captive audience around the clock with mobile. This differs from other channels while a phone can be turned off just like the tv and computer people are less likely to turn the phone off giving businesses more opportunities to reach the consumer.

Engagement

It takes 90 minutes for the average person to respond to an email. It takes 90 seconds for the average person to respond to a text message (CTIA.org). The growth, personalization, and accessibility that mobile offer have given businesses an effective way to engage with their customers. Marketers are able to create more meaningful interactions for consumers and consumers are more likely to engage with them.

What should your business do about it?

Start by optimizing your website for mobile. With so many people using their mobile devices to access information it is important that your business information is there. Going to a site that is not mobile-friendly can be frustrating and cause users to leave the site soon after they visit it, so it is important to make sure your site is optimized.

Next you should look at your products and think about whether or not there are any applications you could add to your product line that would make it easier for consumers to use. You want to make sure that consumers have the easiest time possible using your products and mobile applications put your products at the fingertips of your customers.