Customers Your Company Doesn't Want

(page 2 of 2)

That underscores an important principle: The further removed your brand is from your core target, the less relevant you should expect it to be—and to some people, perceptions about your brand may even tip into the negative column. Burger King (BKC) and Bud Light are much less concerned about how women feel about their brands than what their core male target thinks, and the worst thing that could happen to many youth-oriented brands would be for parents to perceive them as cool. (I'll be curious to see what happens to the teenage tattoo trend once the current crop of young people grow up and have kids of their own. When mom sports a flashy tattoo, junior might look for a different kind of self-expression.)

Who Are Your Best Customers?

You still may find it difficult to think in terms of customers you don't want. But here's a suggestion for how to get there: Start by describing your best customers in terms of a handful of key demographic or attitudinal dimensions. Perhaps you do best among teenagers who live in latch-key households, have their own discretionary income, are media savvy, and are searching for an identity. Or perhaps your best customers are retirees who are living on a fixed income, have lots of time on their hands, like to linger, and endlessly compare notes with one another about the products and services they buy. There are many ways to describe people based on demographics—purchase behavior, lifestyle, attitudes, perceptions, key desires, etc.—and if you reflect on who your best customers are, you can probably create a fairly robust profile.

Next, take that profile and turn it inside out, revealing a customer type with the exact opposite characteristics. Chances are they're not the kind of customer you want to pursue. Oh, sure, you'll take their money if they offer it, but you shouldn't spend valuable resources pursuing them—not when there's a much more fruitful universe of prospects available to you. You might even use this line of thinking to create a continuum of customer types which you can then rank from "most wanted" to "least wanted," enabling you to orient your operations and marketing toward pleasing those in the most wanted column.

A while back I spotted a Harley-Davidson (HOG) t-shirt that read, "If I have to explain, you wouldn't understand." While I'm not the Harley type, as a marketer I respect what the company is trying to do. Harley-Davidson focuses relentlessly on the customers and prospects it does want, and is O.K. with the rest of us figuring out our own forms of transportation, recreation, personal identity, or whatever it is that makes Harley fans so loyal. See? I guess I don't understand.

Steve McKee is president of McKee Wallwork Cleveland Advertising, a firm that specializes in helping stalled companies rekindle growth. He is the author of the new book, When Growth Stalls.

Business Exchange

Track and share business topics across the Web.