How To Identify Your Company’s Elite Customers

Most companies obsessed with how to get more customers. If you pick up the latest marketing manual, you will find the latest social media trends on how to find new customers online or attract new ones through viral promotion. However, sometimes it is not so much about finding new customers. It is about business segmentation. More specifically, it is identifying which of your customers are most important.

Identifying customers is a key strategy for increasing company growth, sales or income levels. After all, how you target the market defines the success of your business. It can mean the difference between getting good customers and selling into a dead end. To stay in the black, your company needs proper customer segmentation.

Some of the best ways to segment your customers are by customer needs, pricing and socioeconomic status. This way, you can focus on the customers who generate either the largest quantity, pricing or both. Depending on your company operations, you might be interested in increasing production or selling cross complementary products.

Customer needs are critical. They are why 99% of businesses exist. They all fill a need. Here, your company can drill down on customers by what need is being fulfilled. Then ask questions like the following. Is it being thoroughly fulfilled? Can we improve our solutions? Are they willing to pay for better quality?

Some companies define their customers in terms of pricing. You can have low price customers, mid range customers and high-priced customers. Here, companies can see which groups are contributing to their bottom line. Then, they can think about some of the following ideas. Which groups can we cater to better? Where is the next best opportunity to grow profits in the short term and long term? Will lower pricing increase volume significantly across the groups?

Socioeconomic status boils down to social classes and customer mindset. These segmentation are dependent upon market research and getting into the heads of your customers. Today, this is easier than ever with the internet and tools we have. However, it requires a great deal of insight to classify customers by the way they want to act, feel or be perceived. Once done, companies can figure out where they want to fit most.

At the end of the day, identifying customers is important part of any business marketing strategy. In start ups, entrepreneurs must have a keen sense of who the customers are. Small businesses want to know their customers and who else they can service. And of course, corporations are always looking for new opportunities to grow. Yes, new customers is the primary job of marketing. But, knowing your customers well, that should be everyone’s job.