I bet that if someone were to ask what your typical customer
looked like it would be just like the last person you
sold something to. Right? The bad part is that an awful
lot of expensive decisions are made on just that kind
of customer analysis. “Visual Indexing” is
what it’s called, and it’s about as reliable
as a birddog that chases rabbits.
With about 80% of your
business coming between the end of October and the end
of the year, the perfect time to
start figuring out who your customer really is should begin
several months before that critical time. In the first
place, the people who buy from you will probably come from
all walks of life with decidedly different checkbook and
bankcard balances. The first thing to remember is that
looks can be deceiving (like watching the Ballet Trucaderos).
Besides, people who really have money don’t have
to dress or act like they do - and most of them don’t.
It’s the people who don’t, but wished they
did, that act and dress like they do. Got that? The second
thing is that you want more customers like those customers
who buy the most more often.
Starting tomorrow, get the
address of every person who buys something from you. Note
how much they spend and what
they spend it on. Keep adding to the list throughout
the holidays. When you’re ready, start grouping the dollar sales and product
sales by address on a map (you could use color-coded pins on a map of the city
as each day progresses to get a running tally). Pretty soon you’ll start
to see a pattern emerging, with some neighborhoods having a lot more pins than
others; some areas won’t have any. You’ll probably also notice that
people in some areas are buying one type of product, others another. What you
want to do now is figure out how to sell people who are like those people who
live in areas that are like the areas where your best customers live.
What you
have just done is coded your customers by geography and you can now start advertising
and direct mailing to those areas alone, or areas just like
them. Simple. By the way, you are now on your way to becoming an expert in
geodemography because you have just “geocoded” your customer profile.
