Know your Core Customer
Hello… I’m your core customer – do you know me?
Target market. Ideal client. Target audience. Whichever word you prefer, core customer should always be the most important word in your business vocabulary. Because it is the life blood of your company. Let’s face it, your entire business revolves around keeping your core customer interested and satisfied with your product and/or service. Therefore, you should constantly be asking: Who is my customer? Where is my customer? How do I reach my customer? Moreover, these are building blocks not only for your marketing strategy, but also for your One-Page Strategic Plan (OPSP).
Where does the concept fit in with 7 Strata and the OPSP?
In the light of the 7 Strata Framework, identifying your core customer forms part of stratum 2. As mentioned before, the 7 Strata is the strategic thinking framework behind the OPSP (One-Page Strategic Plan). The ultimate goal is to complete the One-Page Strategic Plan (OPSP), which is the tool that aligns everyone in the company to be on the same page.
WHY you need to know your core customer
As a business owner, you need to be crystal clear about Who and Where your juicy red core customer is. According to Robert H. Bloom and Dave Conti, this is the customer from whom the business can mine the most profit over time.
Equally important is the fact that you already have some of your ideal customers! With this in mind, leveraging your existing clients is a great strategy. By doing a detailed sales analysis, you will be able to identify the 20% customers who are responsible for 80% of your revenue. However, to scale and grow, you need to be attracting and replicating more of the top 20% customers.
WHAT you need to know about your core customer
In order to know your ideal customers better, you need to know more than pure demographics and statistics about them.
Remember, your ideal client is a real person with
- Needs and fears
- Frustrations and pains
- Concerns and challenges
- Expectations and opportunities
- Interests and hobbies
- Buying patterns, and
- A unique online identity and behaviour, to name a few.
These attributes are often referred to as psychographics. Adding these psychographics to demographics like age, gender, income, education, etc., puts you well on your way to knowing your ideal customer.
I think I know my core customer – what now?
Once you have a pretty good idea of who your ideal customer is, the real work starts. To demonstrate, here are a few #bestpractical tips:
- Pro-actively provide for the needs of your customers.
- This will influence things like new product development, shipping / delivery methods, website user interface, marketing strategy and much more.
- Attract and retain new customers – just like them.
- For example, if you know your core customers prefer Instagram to Facebook, rather advertise on Instagram.
- Customers behave according to their experience of your business and products.
- Ensure that each point of contact with your company is a pleasant experience for each customer.
Can you clearly define your core customer beyond demographics?
If not, CoLAB can facilitate your senior leadership team through the process of identifying your core customer in a half-day workshop. In addition, CoLAB can help with ideas on how and where to reach them; and help with a #bestpractical social media content plan. This forms part of our series on the 7 Strata and OPSP frameworks. If this triggers your interest, connect with us to discuss an affordable package for your needs. Send an email to ingrid at trustcolab dot com, or book a 20-minute, obligation-free call with Barend HERE.
Barend Cronjé, CoLAB CEO, talks more about the core customer concept HERE.
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