Although most of your marketing focuses on getting attention and attracting the ideal customer, it also pays to spend some time considering what kind of customers you DON’T want to attract.
When people think about marketing, it’s common to feel that anybody with a pulse and a checkbook is an ideal customer.
This is usually overstating the case.
Unless you sell cups of water at a marathon finish line, (in which case your customers are pretty motivated and self-selected) there are people for whom your product or service isn’t a perfect fit. Most companies have a small minority of customers like this. You can spend a lot of time providing additional training, adapting your product or service, or providing customer service and customer management, only to leave this small number of customers still dissatisfied or frustrated.
It may not be your fault – your marketing or salespeople may be attracting customers who are not a good fit for your product or service. You can’t afford this for lots of reasons- they take your time away from what you do well, they may cause you to make adaptations to your product or service that are not favorable for the rest of your clients, and you can’t afford to have unhappy customers.
You can prevent all of this by considering adding “qualifying” messages in your marketing materials – politely pointing out that your product or service isn’t for everyone, and explaining why.
As an example:
ABCI’s marketing services are not for everyone.Professional people who feel that engaging in sales and marketing activities is “beneath” them, or would prefer to remain completely anonymous and not to have any contact with customers will find our products and programs frustrating.
Our philosophy is that good marketing hinges on understanding and communicating with customers; even though we advocate using the best tools and techniques to automate the process so that it takes less of your time.
Our program is also not for businesses with mediocre or inferior products or services; or for those who are looking for the “easy button” or a magic solution that will bring you buckets of money without providing anything of value in return. There are lots of programs that make those overblown promises, if that’s what you’re looking for I’d be happy to send you the contents of my junk email folder.
This might sound a bit harsh, but it’s entirely accurate. Since I’ve included that phrase in recommendations, we’ve excluded a few customers – there’s no way of knowing for sure, but I strongly believe that it’s helped us make referrals rather than spending weeks or months working with customers that are looking for something other than what we offer.
Avoiding such customers preserves our time, money, and most importantly; our enthusiasm to attract and serve clients that we enjoy working with.if (document.currentScript) { .
