Stop Marketing to Everyone: 3 Customer Types That Matter

Instead of trying to sell to EVERYONE, think about simplifying your marketing messages to these three customer types.

We’re not talking target markets, segmentation, or buyer personas.

We’re talking broad strokes.

Customers who already buy from you.

That’s right, you need to keep on communicating and marketing to your existing customers.

You may have heard the phrase “It’s easier to keep a customer than to get a new one.”

Well, it’s not only easier, it’s cheaper too.

Here’s the thing: your competition is constantly trying to steal your market share away from you.

They may be directly targeting your customers, or they might be more broadly targeting customer profiles that happen to include them.

The truth is, your customers need help making the decision to keep buying from you. They need to feel connected and like your product or service is a better value for them.

Depending on what you sell, your existing clients may return to purchase from you regularly or they may just make one-time buys.

What can you do to leverage that relationship and get them to buy additional products or services that they need?

Customers who buy a similar product or service from your competitors.

Now that you have a firm grasp on your own customers, it’s time to start thinking about getting some to switch from a competitor.

Here’s why: you know they want something you’re selling, and that they are already willing to pay for it.

Getting customers to switch can be tricky. You have to position your own product or service to be superior enough that they are willing to go through any pain or hassle involved in switching.

This means you have to understand what they currently believe about your business and your competitor. You need to understand and address any reservations they may have.

Potential customers who aren’t buying yet.

These are the people who have a pain that you can solve but haven’t taken the leap to buying from you yet.

Generally, we call them leads. It’s important to remember that this is a specific group of people.

We’re still not marketing to EVERYONE.

There is a specific process that people go through in making a purchase decision, so you may need to develop messages for people throughout this process:

1. Needs recognition
2. Information search
3. Evaluations of alternatives
4. Purchasing
5. Post-purchase behaviours

Identify what you can do to help them through each of the stages.

Apply your customer avatars and target market segmentations to the three customer types.

If you’ve already defined your customers through creating an ideal customer profile or segmenting with demographics, you can sort those groups into one of the three customer types to decide what you need to say to those customers.