Best customers.

Most small business marketing efforts simply dont lavish enough attention on their best customers. Either the small business doesnt know who its best customers are, or it doesnt believe its important to love them up.

Well, your competition loves either of these marketing mistakes. Each is especially effective at driving your customers into their waiting arms. Why hand over your best customers to your competitors? Why not make your competition earn their customers the old-fashioned way, with costly advertising campaigns and sales promotions?

Best customers may be just 20% of the total number of your customers--but they can easily drive 80% of your profits. Not sales--profits. Its the classic Pareto rule of 80/20. To leverage these best customers, you must first identify them. If you dont know who your best customers are, then how can you market to them? You cant, and your small business marketing will suffer because youll pitch unnecessary advertising dollars at your least profitable customers, and spend too little on your best ones.

Best customers deserve more marketing dollars. Its that simple. Your most valuable employees receive higher compensation, right? Then why dont you spend more on your best customers? After all, theyre spending more on you.

Each small business has its own unique challenges in first identifying who the most profitable customers are. Its not easy, no matter what the marketing gurus out there say. It takes diligent work and perseverance to uncover and identify who these best customers are. But, it can often be accomplished, provided the entrepreneur who owns the small business possesses the will to find out who the best customers are. Once youve made your mind up that you need to identify and market to your most profitable customer segment, everything else boils down to strategy and tactics.

And yes, it is possible your small business simply cant target its best customers. Some businesses have no way of identifying them; others cant find an economical way to communicate with their best customers, once they do recognize them.

But if you can accomplish both--identify and communicate with these top 20% who drive major profits--then you can seriously make more money. You can reach out to your best customers, incent them to keep returning and buying from you, and then move forward in your prospecting and try to find other people who look like them

Remember: Brand (who you are) + Package (your Face to the Customer) + People (customers and employees) = Marketing Success.

2006 Marketing Hawks