More money is thrown at the tomb of the unknown customer than any other source of marketing waste.
Unless you can define very well indeed who your customer is, you will be wasting most of any time, effort, and money you spend.
Defining who your ideal customer is involves choices, as you also have to determine who is not, and therefore you will not spend resources trying to reach and influence them. This is really difficult for most, especially smaller businesses, to whom turning away a potential customer is an appalling thought.
Over 35 years ago I took over as Marketing Manager of the newly formed General Products Division of Dairy Farmers.
The brand of yoghurt we had was Ski, market leader in a small, and slowly growing market. When I joined, Yoplait had just launched, and the market had exploded. Ski’s volumes were about the same, but share had dropped to single figures as Yoplait had, rightly, taken all the growth for itself.
During a qualitative research project aimed at understanding who was buying yoghurt, which brands they preferred and why, the researcher asked the respondents to describe each of the major brands in human terms.
Yoplait was an educated, hip, self reliant, confident young woman who had her life in order the way she wanted it.
Ski was a reliable 50 year old farmer in wellies.
The advertising plan that was in place when I arrived was just more of the same old stuff, trying to convince ‘Miss Yoplait’ that the wellie wearing farmer was a good choice for her.
Might not have worked very well, so it was changed, and Ski started on a 5 year roll of product innovation that led to market leadership.
25 years later, Chobani came along and has done the same thing, again, as the so called marketers who followed, lost sight of the consumer, leaving the field open for a better targeted offer from a newcomer.
Need some help thinking this challenging stuff through? Give me a call.
