Today’s Tidbit is short and sweet – but powerful.
I got a letter recently from a large company. As I pulled it from my mailbox, I was somewhat intrigued. Everything about it seemed like it was shipped to me, personally, until I opened it up.
Something immediately jumped out at me as I glanced at the letter. I found my name (my full name NOAH FLEMING) bolded at least six times throughout the letter.
It was obvious I was reading a form letter, and I was instantly turned off. I don’t even remember what they were trying to sell me.
I had been mail merged!
Does your company ever send out sales and marketing material without considering how the intended recipient might react?
In my sometime-in-the-next-millennium book, Evergreen: Cultivate the Enduring Customer Loyalty that Keeps Your Business Thriving, I present a pretty powerful process for building the archetypes of your ideal customers.
When you take the time to learn about your ideal customer archetypes and build models to describe them, you can sell to them with maximum effectiveness and maximum profitability all the time.
Here’s the challenge:
When you learn, intimately, who your customers are and how they behave, it will become crystal clear that each group of customers requires different marketing, different messaging, and different types follow-up.
Here’s why this matters:
[tweetable alt=””]There is nothing more valuable than a comprehensive, thorough, deep psychological and emotional understanding of your entire customer base. [/tweetable]You need to understand how to reach each type of customer, what resonates with them, and how to speak to them.
Ever heard the story about the sales guy who leaves the company to go do it on his own, and ends up wildly successful? (there’s no one specific example – because they’re a dime a dozen!)
The reason he or she was able to do this was because he knew the customer’s profiles inside and out – better than anyone else.
Most companies, by the way, are simply much too lazy to become this in tune with their different types of customers. It’s easier to splatter a message and hope it hits someone than it is to target with laser-like precision.
How about you?
