Know your ideal customer to build a good brand

You might be the owner of a small business with an existing brand. Or you might just be launching a product or service and creating a brand around it. Whichever may be your situation, do you know who your IDEAL customer is?

At this point you might be thinking, why are we talking about ideal customers? Aren't all customers good for the business? The answer is YES, they are and you want to be selling to whoever is willing to buy from you. But the crucial question to ask yourself is "At what cost ?"

Selling costs money. Selling to different kinds of customers imply different flavors of ads, promos and campaigns. Surely what appeals to a teen will not resonate equally with an elderly. Without a clear idea of who you can sell the most to at a minimum cost, you don't know where to put your money when developing an ad campaign or branding your company.

Companies new and old implement this "targeted marketing" strategy everyday. Consumers are aware of it and in fact expect it since this makes their job easier.

You need to know the correct "market segment" to sell your product to. "Identifying the ideal customer" exercise is a easy D-I-Y way of recognizing your correct market segment.

Here are a few guidelines to identify the "Ideal Customer"

1. Which geographical areas are your customers located at?
 You need to know where are customers going to buy your products so that you don't try to sell ice-coolers in the North pole.

2. How are different groups of customers using your product ?
Are there multiple uses of your product ? What is the main use and which group is the predominant user community.

3. Who are you selling to ?
Their age, gender, household composition, ethnicity, hobbies, affiliations etc. You need to picture an individual when you say "customer" and you need to know in your mind how that individual should ideally be.

4. What is the ideal buying behavior ?
Is your product an impulse buy or do people consider is thoroughly and get recommendation? That would directly decide if you should try to influence the people buying it or the people who have already bought it and writing reviews. That is your big Pre-sale service vs Post-sale service trade-off decision.

Use the data you can gather from your business or your competitors. When in doubt use your imagination and vision of where you want your product or service to go. When your "ideal customer" materializes, give him or her a name and make them your friend!

What no one told you in Branding 101

You might have heard it all in your Branding 101 spiel ......
"Brand is king", "Brands are stories that are always being told", "Branding is an instinct ".....
 Brand this... Brand that .. and then of course the whole "how to brand" tutorials...

What no one really tells you is when should you brand?

When you are setting up a small business, you are getting pulled in 100 directions; you are worried about your product, the storefront, the new clients ....the list is endless. You throw your precious marketing dollars at a marketing person (or worse an automated marketing engine), not knowing what it does but expecting a line outside your store or an inbox full of orders to magically appear.

Of course if you are lucky it works, but for the unlucky ones, there isn't any line outside the door.

So off you go to meet new clients, trying to sell your product and you come across the age old conundrum  :

" I don't know who you are, where you are from, how you got my number ... AND you are trying to sell me what ?"

If you brand your product BEFORE you try to sell it, you should be able to answer that question well. In fact even before you spend a precious penny towards a marketing or PR effort, you need to brand your product or business. How else would you figure out WHAT to market, WHAT message to put out, WHAT people might buy?

Branding is the very first step to figure out  the answer to the above questions and few of the following

1. What "benefit" are you selling to your customers (People don't buy features, they buy benefits!).
2. What sets you apart from the store next door.
3. How do you want your customers to perceive you.

The answers to these questions will be the basis of your IMC(Integrated Marketing Communications) or simply, the unique branding message that you will put out through all your marketing material and channels.

So, before you print that brochure, put in that ad, get that billboard..

make sure you know what your brand is.