Reach Your Core Customer (with High Precision) to Prosper
How much money are you wasting on marketing that sees no returns?
A successful marketing plan's foundation starts with understanding your core customer. The more you align with your customer's needs, recognise how to communicate with them and know where to reach them, allows your business to spend its marketing investment more effectively to maximise return on investment.
For example, Red Bull describes its target consumer as an adventure-seeking young person aged 18-34 with an insatiable appetite for high-risk endeavours. Red Bull has a strong global event marketing strategy to help reach their target audience and increase awareness through hosting extreme sports activations such as the Grand Prix and Red Bull Air Race. If you have been to one of these events or even watched it at home, you are more than likely to remember it through their use of consistent branding and messaging that aligns with their core customer.
Reportedly Red Bull invests a large portion of their revenue back into marketing campaigns and activations in the extreme sports event arena. And have published that in 2022 they sold a total of 11.582 billion cans worldwide, resulting in an 18% increase in 2021. Alignment with their core customer and understanding how to reach and resonate with them is a strategy that is paying off handsomely for the business.
As a fundamental pillar of business strategy, we encourage brands to create a clear picture of their target market. Bob Bloom, the author of a classic book "Inside Advantage", defines the five key elements of a core customer as:
A real person with wants, needs and fears
Will buy your product or service for optimal profit
Has a unique online identity and behaviours
Pays on time, is loyal, and will refer to others
Exists in your customer base today
Successful companies have been known to leave a seat at the boardroom or executive team table for their core customer. Some have gone as far as creating a cardboard cut-out, naming it, and including their role and persona in all key business decisions.
We have seen many companies take an extremely broad, shotgun approach to attracting new business. They have a hazy (at best) understanding of their clientele and spend large percentages of their revenue marketing to potential customer groups without being focused nor being able to track their marketing efficacy.
Simply pouring money into marketing will, without a lot of luck, result in less than satisfying returns and place the company under pressure from high expenses, key targets not being achieved, and required growth levels not being met.
Here are three simple steps to identify your core customer and grow your business without the pain.
Spend some time in your next Exec Meeting to consider how well-honed your definition of your core customer is. Can you make it 25 words or less?
Use your internal communication to highlight the importance of identifying your core customer and fine-tune your business accordingly.
Assess your marketing efforts. How focused are you in spending your company's time, money and other resources in targeting your core customer?
Refining your marketing activities to better focus on your core customer is imperative grow your market share and your business.
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