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Select your customers for better business

by Dianne Perrett

It never ceases to amaze me how many companies still do not have an active, up-to-date database of their customers.
Direct marketing, and database management, started coming to the fore years ago as a cost effective method of marketing goods/services to identified groups of people.

The "old" marketing era was about company's mass communicating with a market by shouting out what they've got to offer and providing information on how the customer could contact the company. It still has a role to play in brand building and in positioning your company amongst your competitors in the mind of mass users.

However, the "new" era talks about defining who an ideal customer is for you and then collecting information on where you can find more of them. Obviously it is easier if you are an established business. It sounds quite complicated but it needn't be. Define the characteristics of a good customer eg buys over a certain amount of your products/services monthly, is a leader/active person in the marketplace or industry, is situated in areas that you can service effectively, pays on time, is pleasant/fun to deal with etc.

Once you have the criteria that define an ideal customer for you, brainstorm with your team where you can find more customers like this. Do they belong to a group/club that you can tap into, do they belong to associations where you can build relationships, do they congregate in certain places annually where you can have a presence etc. Look at ways to creatively extend the number of people who come into contact with your name so that recall is created.

Once you have made contact with people, please capture the information and back it up so that you do not lose their details. I speak from experience in losing information. I had a data-base that took 5 years to build and when my hard drive crashed I lost it all! It took twelve months to rebuild and I still have not located some people who were valuable contacts. Your database is your most important tool and someone must be accountable for maintaining it and backing it up.

It doesn't matter if you are a small hair salon, a sporting association, a school, a small business or a large corporate.
If you don't have an up-to-date database you ability to market yourself directly to the right person, cost effectively,
is severely curtailed. It's hard work but will pay you back ten-fold and apart from the tangible results will also have you
feeling in complete control of your marketing, and that's got to be good for you.