Mindshare Marketing

It is difficult to envision a “perfect” customer. Are they the one who spends more than 10% of their annual income on your products? The person who frequents your store without hearing a single word of advertising? Is it the person who buys little but visits every day? The perfect customer could be any or all of these things, depending on your product and your business. A broad definition of the perfect customer is an un-hired advertising force – the man or woman who encourages friends, family, and strangers to patronize your brand without any compensation for their efforts.

The perfect customer is a marketing force unto itself. He listens to your brand story and keys in on your company’s culture. This is the one customer you won’t lose due to negative PR. Direct mail pieces will be read rather than recycled, and loyalty programs will be blown out of the water. A great example is Don Gorske of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. If you have seen the documentary “Super Size Me,” you will remember him as the “Big Mac enthusiast.” He has eaten a Big Mac almost every day since 1972 and, despite a growing anti-fast food sentiment, continues the habit today

Take a close look at your marketing budget. How much of that budget is devoted towards flooding information channels with advertisements and product data? Why not save money and target your perfect customer rather than hoards of over-targeted consumers who will ignore you anyway? Marketing and advertising can be hit-or-miss in many segments. Targeting perfect customers rather than potential customers all but guarantees your hit-to-miss ratio will improve.

How do you define your perfect customer?

Everything has a purpose. Cars were invented to replace horses as a more convenient and, arguably, cheaper means of transportation. Sports drinks are efficient ways to hydrate athletes than water alone. This blog exists to further my establishment within the marketing community. Everything has a purpose, a reason for being – this extends to companies.

Eliyahu Goldratt claims the goal of a company is to make money, but that is not its purpose. Starbucks, for example, exists to deliver an experience to its customers and establish a unique culture all its own. Starbucks does, however, make a good deal of money. This allows the company to stay afloat and continue fulfilling its purpose. As a few have said in the past, “businesses don’t exist to make money, they make money to exist.”

The “four Ps” of marketing help to establish the marketing mix. After defining a product, the company focuses on setting a price, determining a place to offer its goods, and creating an appropriate position in the market. “Purpose” should always be considered as the overarching fifth P of marketing. What purpose does the product fill?  What is the purpose of a particular price point? Why is the product offered in this place rather than another? Why take this position in the market versus one closer to/further from the competition?

When opening for business, every responsible businessman should consider the question, “what is my company’s purpose?” Answering this question is the first step to building a successful company and establishing a lasting brand. The answer leads to more questions that help define the “four Ps” later on.

Assume for a moment that we are starting a hot dog restaurant. Our purpose is to provide an inviting restaurant for our customers to enjoy the best hot dogs in the state. Ambitious, yes, but consider what questions we can answer now: “How will we prepare our hot dogs?” “How will we balance the quality of our hot dogs with their cost and, ultimately, the price the customer pays?” “Where will we establish our restaurant?” “How will we differentiate from other hot dog vendors?”

These are the questions marketers seek to answer every day in defining marketing strategy. Like every idea, these questions had to start somewhere. Instead of brainstorming 20 questions about our new operation, the answer to one question has defined four. Answering these questions will lead to more, but we will have accomplished something. Understanding the color schemes of our restaurant or the flavor soda in the fountain machine is meaningless information if we cannot answer these four questions.

What is the purpose of your business? Did you answer that question before or after opening your doors?

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!  I hope you all had the opportunity to overdose on turkey and reconnect with loved ones over the holiday.

Starting on Monday, I will be working on a 31 days of blogging project.  I will endeavor to update this space every day for a month.  There are a few others also involved in the project, and I will be linking to their sites soon.  The remainder of the weekend will be dedicated to polishing the page layout and contemplating a list of post ideas.  If you have anything you’re dying to hear my comments on, shoot over an email and I’ll add you to the list.