Tips for research you can do to raise your profitability.
Why are some clients more work than others? People who drain your energy and sap your strength are not worth it. Doing basic research to better identify the bull's eye in your target market will allow you to start letting go of these low profitability accounts, get more energy, and increase your overall profits. The largest benefit in doing this research is it'll give your marketing team and sales staff more clarity about who you¡¯re trying to reach so you attract more of those valuable and high profit clients.
Who are your best customers? Best is defined any way you want to define it, but some of the absolute basics include, they want our products and services (Keep in mind people by what they want, not what they need. t make Oreos®.); willing and able to pay our full fee and pay on time; want services / products we want to provide; and are a pleasure to deal with.
How did you get those customers? Do they tend to come from a certain referral point? For example, if you ran an ad in a publication and 50% of your existing customers cited it as what made them contact you, was it the publication or the ad itself? One way to test that is to place the same ad in a publication with similar readers and content. Give both ads a code number or other tracking device and watch what happens.
What is similar about your best customers? Look at the demographic information you have about them. These are characteristics such as age, sex, marital status, family size, education level, geographic location, occupation, etc. If you're a B-to-B service / product provider, then you need to have 2 sets of demographics – one for the companies you serve and one for the people who make the buying decisions.
What demographic information do not you have and how can you get it?
Look at the psychographics to flesh out the similarities. Psychographics are the lifestyles, interests, behaviors, thinking, and attitudes of people. You may already have a lot of this information if you and your staff have developed solid relationships with your existing clients.
Create a profile of your primary target customer based on that data and be as detailed as possible. You'll use the profile of your ABC Company Andy or ABC Company Andrea when making marketing and advertising decisions. For example, a magazine comes to you and solicit your business. The deal they offer may sound good but how many of the readers are ABC Andys or Andreas? How important is the magazine in Andy's or Andrea's life? Does Andy or Andrea read it regularly or only only occasionally?
We create marketing pieces with powerful visual images and use words that make the prospect client feel like they're being directly spoken to. Our messages are on target and will motivate the reader to take action which will result in a higher return on investment for you.
Your next step: Set aside time to start mining the data in your customer list. The steps you take now will set you up for making next year your best yet.
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