Your customers are each individual people. No one customer is exactly the same as the next one. When performing your market research, you will undoubtedly come across and/or use such terms as: target market, demographics, household income, etc.

It is crucial, though, to realize that though this data is valuable, it is nothing more than looking at the entire forest instead of the individual trees. When you take the time to look at the individual tree, it has the ability to teach you more about the entire forest than you could ever learn by only looking at the whole forest.

Getting to know your customers on an individual level does a few things that are to your advantage:

1. It provides you with a unique opportunity to learn exactly what it is that brings that customer to your business instead of a competitor.
2. You demonstrate your true appreciation of your customers and inadvertently encourage your customers to increase their word-of-mouth marketing on your behalf. People love to talk about businesses/companies that treated them right, particularly when they are asked for a recommendation.
3. By learning from an individual customer, you are able to gain a greater understanding of how all of your customers think, specifically, and with detail.

Knowing who is in your target market and what their general demographics are is definitely important. But equally, if not more so, as important, is the understanding of what makes your individual customers tick.

How do you do that exactly? A customer survey, whether formal or informal, is the most common way of doing this. There are some key things to keep in mind when preparing your survey and when conducting your survey.

When preparing your survey:

• Start with the end in mind. Know what you’re trying to accomplish with the survey. Keep the questions focused in on this objective. Don’t ask for more information than what you really need to gain perspective on the things you’d like to know. For example, asking your customer what kinds of pets they have only makes sense if your product serves either the pets themselves or handles the concerns of a pet owner.
• Be objective with your questions. Don’t lead customers into saying that they love your product or hate your product, rather use questions that remain neutral and give your customer the ability to answer honestly – and without having to feel bad for being honest.
• Use open ended questions for at least part of your survey. Give your customers a chance to tell you more and in their own words. If you are conducting an informal, verbal survey, this is very easy to accomplish and can provide some of the best information you could ever ask for.
• Make the language simple and easy to understand. Don’t use jargon, industry-speak, acronyms, etc. Make sure you don’t try and inflate the appearance of your intelligent by using big words. Use language that your customers will understand, but be careful not to use language that is too simple and therefore insults your customers’ intelligence.

When conducting the survey:

• Treat your research just as you would any customer interaction. Use respect and regard your customers’ information with the utmost respect.
• Don’t argue/debate with an answer. This defeats the purpose entirely. If you customer gives you an answer you don’t like, ask them how they would suggest fixing the issue. Take down their answer, and move on.
• Tell your customers what your objectives are. By telling the customer what your objectives are you provide them with the right mental framework to answer questions in a way that is the most helpful and beneficial to your success in achieving those objectives.
• Use multiple surveying methods. Some customers will prefer to just fill out a postcard with some answers. Others would prefer you email them a survey they can answer online. Others will appreciate a phone call (usually only customers you have a close relationship with, and only those who have given you permission to call them), and many would love to answer a few questions in person while that are at your location.
• Provide something of value in return for participation. This provides both an incentive for your customers to participate in the survey, and also gives you an easy way to say thank you. Try to steer clear of giving store credit, if possible. Store credit is nice, but a gift card for $5-$10 will be much more appreciated. Also, offering “a chance to win” is not really an incentive for most people.

The bottom line: get to know your customers as individuals. You’ll learn a whole heck of a lot more about what your customers in general really want.

Do you know your perfect customer? When was the last time you talked to her/him? What questions did you ask them? Did you really listen to what they truly thought about you and your business?

So many businesses and business people forget one key element to running a successful business – knowing who their perfect customer really is.

The concept is found in just about every business book you can think of, but I don’t think the message is getting across to business people. Granted, some businesses have harnessed the power of this concept, but it seems to me that the vast majority of them have missed the point. I’ve been guilty of this in the past myself.

When putting together a business plan – no matter how detailed or generic – one of the key elements that is critical to determine is the “target market.” So many entrepreneurs and business people respond with a generic “our target market is men between 25 and 45 with two kids and a household income of $100k to $200k.” On the surface, this sounds pretty focused. When you look closer, though, you should realize that this is still way too broad of a group to go after.

To be truly effective in with your marketing – and with your business in general for that matter – you have to know exactly what your perfect customer is. Blanket approaches simply don’t work anymore.

When you take the time to really focus on who your perfect customer is, you may find out that what you thought of as your target market was dramatically different than your perfect customer. You may think that your target market is men between 25 and 45, etc, but you may learn that the spouse (a woman) is the one actually writing the check. A good example of this is auto insurance.

Before you do anything related to marketing your business, ask yourself these questions to figure out who you think your perfect customer is:

• Is your perfect customer a man, woman, child, or some combination?
• Is your perfect customer wealthy, middle class, or living paycheck to paycheck?
• Does your perfect customer live close to other people that would also be perfect customers for you?
• What is the daily routine of your perfect customer?
• What makes your customer decide to buy your product or service?
• How many people does your perfect customer tell about your business?

These are just some primer questions. If you are really taking the idea of finding your perfect customer seriously, these questions will lead to deeper questions. By the end of working through this, you should have an idea of your perfect customer in your mind – or preferably written down somewhere.

After you’ve done this, and you know exactly who your perfect customer is, deciding how to plan and execute your marketing program will be much easier, more effective, and you’ll make more money (well, you should, anyway).

The parallels between attracting customers to your business and attracting a date this weekend are often missed, but for those businesses that understand how to interpret the similarities, the rewards will be grand.

Marketing and dating are not often two words found in the same sentence. Okay, maybe since the advent of the internet dating they are more commonly found together, but you catch my drift. They are not often found together, but they are built upon the same foundational principles.

Select a Target

Knowing who you want to date is by far the most important element of a successful attempt at dating – the same applies to your customers and target market. If you are putting your effort into attracting customers that are premium customers just because you know they have money – and that’s really the only reason you are marketing to them – you will learn the that these customers do not make you happy, and therefore you do not treat them with the passion required to have a successful engagement. By knowing who your perfect customer is, you’re able to determine which customers to leave alone.

When you know who your perfect date is, it’s much easier to focus on achieving the objective – getting a date. Why? Because you are not distracted and you don’t waste time with the ones that you know you will not mesh well with. It’s nothing personal, it’s just reality, you know you, and you know what you like, and you’re actually doing the other person a favor by leaving them alone. When it comes to customers, the same is true. You may spend 45 minutes with someone that is simply in your store to “browse” or “tire-kick” and they will probably not buy anything anyway – or it will be a small ticket item. Whereas if you are focused on the right customers, you will spend 15 minutes and sell more.

Some pointers:

• Look at your existing customer list and rank them in order of which ones are closest to perfect (i.e. they were easy to talk to, they appreciated the value of what you offer, they didn’t haggle you on price, etc etc)
• From the top 10-20 customers, create a list of customer features that you consider the main reasons you enjoyed working with those particular customers – keep the list to 10 features
• Prioritize the list of 10 features by importance to you

The Approach

Winning the affections of a prospective date requires one dramatically important element – the first move. If you never make a move, you won’t get a date. Period. Customers are no different. Anyone who’s been shopping has probably experienced the annoying circumstance where a retail clerk flat-out ignores your presence – even when you try and make eye-contact to get them to make a move they still don’t. You’re ready to buy, but they don’t seem to care. It’s frustrating, and you will probably walk out of the store empty-handed, even if you found something on your own that you liked.

Ever wonder what the most successful pick-up line is? It’s a game-changer. You better sit down for this, it’s only one word: “Hi.” Crazy, right? Simply saying hello and acknowledging the person’s presence is in most circumstances the best way to get a date/customer. Take notice next time you go shopping, where do you typically end up spending your money? I’d guess that it’s in the stores where the service is friendly and inviting – the places where when you walk in, the staff members say, “Hi,” or, “Welcome,” or similar.

Call it an ice-breaker, call it an opener, call it a pick-up line. Whatever you call it, make sure you do it. Acknowledge your customers; let them know you are there for them. Don’t be annoying, because no one likes the annoying salespeople, but make sure they know you are there and ready to be of assistance when it becomes necessary or desired by the customer.

Some pointers:

• Pick-up lines are lame. So are scripted “Welcome to Shenanigans!” welcoming statements forcefully delivered by irritated staff members to customers as they immediately cross the threshold of the entryway. Avoid them. Go with as subtle an approach as possible. Typically, a simple, “Hello, how are you today?” is just enough, especially when delivered between 3 and 7 seconds after they enter your store.
• Obviously, not all businesses are retail businesses. If you are in outside sales, for example, you may not have customers walking in your door. The concept remains, though, keep it simple. As an example, when you call a prospect, don’t bombard them with 10 features about the product you are selling. Instead, focus on building rapport and a personal connection by asking them what features they have found lacking in other products that compare with yours – let them do the talking first.
• Practice different wording and approaches with different customers. Take notes on which types of customers were receptive to which types of approaches. If you’ve heard of Split A/B testing in advertising, use the same concept to test your initial approach.
• I used the concepts of a retail store and outside salesperson in the above examples, but your approach in marketing is really anything related to the first point of contact with a prospective customer. It could be a postcard in a direct mail campaign, it could be a door hanger, it could be a billboard or TV ad, it could be a Facebook page or a tweet on Twitter. The point is, keep it simple, and try and make it as close to a simple “hello” as possible.

Coming Up:

• Dating Your Customers – Part 2 – Demonstrate Value and Anticipate Objections
• Dating Your Customers – Part 3 – Create An Emotional Connection and Increase Buying Temperature
• Dating Your Customers – Part 4 – Kill Last-Minute Resistance and Manage Expectations

An interesting thing happened this morning. After sleeping in past 7:30 (part of my Saturday traditions), I proceeded to get up and mosey into the living room where Lynne and Caden were already up watching TV. After sitting quietly watching Caden flip through the full cycle of channels without finding anything that he seemed to find worthy of watching, he asked if we wanted to watch a movie on Netflix (we have a home theater PC setup that makes watching Netflix streaming movies a breeze).

After flipping the TV input to VGA to receive the signal from the monitor output on the PC, I took a moment to observe how Caden (currently 9 years old) navigated his way to Netflix. I have him trained to use Firefox (developers rejoice), so he clicked the icon on the Windows quick launch bar to open the browser. On this machine, we left the default Firefox home page alone so the window presents a screen that looks like so:

This is where things got interesting. Instead of using the large Google search box in the middle of the screen (where the cursor is set by default when the page loads), Caden moved the mouse to select the small Google search box in the top right corner of the window. More interesting still were Caden’s steps after typing ‘netflix’ into the box and hitting enter. When presented with the Google search results, he selected the absolute first link he saw that he knew would take him to his destination. This happened to be a sponsored link for Netflix, not the organic search results found below it. For the visually inclined, he clicked here:

How children are being conditioned to use the Internet

It became clear at that moment that one of the things I have not paid much attention to is how our children are being taught to use the Internet, and more specifically, how to use search engines to find what they are looking for. Lynne and I proposed the notion that he had been conditioned to use the small box in the top right, thereby causing him to completely ignore the big search box on the middle of the screen.

On top of that, it became clear that even though he undoubtedly knows that Netflix is found easily by simply typing netflix.com into the browser’s address bar, he chose to go the “long way” by performing a search, which provides further evidence of some pre-existing conditioning.

The blind leading the blind

It dawned on me that he most likely had not been educated and therefore conditioned to the concept of going directly to his destination. Even more importantly for businesses, though, was his quick-clicking action on the sponsored link. At 9 years old, he doesn’t care that it’s a sponsored link, he just wanted to get to Netflix.

Granted, as he grows older and more educated in the ways of the Internet he may be less-inclined to click on sponsored links, but the lesson remains. The businesses that have opted to not promote themselves via Google and other major search engine sponsored links (at a minimum for those people that are searching specifically for their company) are most likely missing large opportunities every day.

As our children grow into this Internet and information age, it seems easy to forget about how they are taught to navigate these waters. Where we need to be careful is in realizing that many teachers may not have the knowledge of how to navigate the Internet themselves that our children need to be taught by. [As an aside: I have huge respect and appreciation for teachers, and in no way mean to belittle them in my previous comment] In many ways, those that are in teaching positions are still learning how to harness the power of the Internet themselves.

What to do

As businesses increasingly build relationships with customers via online tools (not just their website, but also social media, etc) they need to be especially focused on how the upcoming generations will look for and find them online. They are not buyers yet, but they influence the largest buying group (women) dramatically – don’t think they don’t. And in the near future, they will be buyers, and if they aren’t able to find you, they will not have the loyalty of your older demographic customers. Kids and teens are far more inclined to move on in an instant if they are unable to find what they are looking for – which means they move on past your business if you’re not prepared.

Those of us that are in the internet and social media industries recognize the added value to our interactions that sites like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc bring to us on a daily, hourly, or every minute or so basis. My soon-to-be son, Caden, has his own blog; he is working on his first book about “The Solar System” and he has employed the help of 3 other classmates (employees as he calls them) to work on different aspects of the project; he has his own cell phone (though, not an iPhone); he plays guitar hero better than me; and by the way, he’s 8. Even being as “connected” as I am, he still amazes me. This probably doesn’t really surprise many though, as the recent ads by Microsoft have demonstrated the adept nature of our youngsters already.

What should be taken into consideration by everyone in the industry, however, is the influx of so-called boomers. According to a study conducted by The NPD Group published in September, 2008,

61% of baby boomer Internet users (age 44 to 61) had visited sites that offer streaming or downloadable video (e.g. YouTube and TV network[s]), while 41% had visited social networks (e.g. LinkedIn, Facebook, and MySpace).

This information alone may surprise some people, but it becomes even more enlightening when cross-compared to data put together by Pew Internet that indicates the number of boomer users that are on the web has increased from 40% in 2000 to 74% in 2008, <5% had broadband in 2000, whereas 62% had it in 2008, and 0% used wireless connections in 2000 and 43% connect wirelessly now.

The web is no longer a place for young people to rule. Within the last decade, boomers have proven that they should be taken into consideration in both the offline and online realms. Retailers can no longer afford to focus 80-90% of their resources on their retail front; B2C and B2B companies alike must recognize the growing demand for rich content on the web. Perhaps one of the most important factors to consider is that 81% of boomers that use the Internet use it to research products before they make a purchase, and 70% of boomers that use the Internet use it to buy products online.

This affects everyone. Designers, developers, retailers, businesses, schools, non-profit organizations, etc are ALL affected by this. All design and development should take into consideration that all demographics are now on the web, not just young users – even social media sites.

The companies that will make it through this recession are the companies that realize two key things: 1) that the companies that continue/increase their current marketing/advertising budgets will thrive; and 2) that the web is the new store front. It is quickly replacing the ever important mantra of “location, location, location.” Though location is still very important to business (especially retail/restaurants); it cannot go without consideration that people don’t just drive around to find things anymore. They simply Google it, or now, they may even Tweet it and get better information that even Google can provide.

Today provided a great example of this: Lynne and Caden were going to play tennis this afternoon after school. The court they first went to was full and Lynne called me to find the nearest open court. Within 60 seconds, I had a Google map listing every tennis court in Lubbock and the surrounding area. I was able to give her 3 locations to try, and within minutes. Another example: a few weeks back, my parents came to Lubbock to meet Lynne’s parents, and while we were out driving around town, we needed directions to a local winery. I opened Google Maps on my iPhone and within seconds I was routing our fastest path to Llano Winery.

The companies/organizations that do everything they can to empower their web presence will be the companies that we’ll be doing business with in the future. The ones that subscribe to the philosophy that it’s still business as usual are setting themselves up for failure. The Internet is officially a family venture, and it’s obviously not “just hype.”