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The Power of Being Different

Lesson 6: Identifying your Target group.

Depending on your goals, you should know whom you are aiming at. Who will be your clients? Who are the ones that you can sell your product to? What are their habits? How can you reach them? What do you expect from them? These are some of the questions that become important at this stage.

If your target group is a whole society, keep this in mind:

It is tremendously important to make yourself familiar with a society's culture before trying to penetrate it. It's always easy to see things from your own perspective, assuming that everyone should understand what's so wonderful about your product or service.

Just reading about all the blunders made in history by large multinationals, proves that even the most sizable and experienced marketers make that error time and again. (Marques, 2001, The Importance of Recognizing Culture in Marketing)

 

It may be extremely important to follow a few steps when entering a market, no matter whether the reason for entering is for business, personal, or other purposes. Here are the basics:

·         Don't assume that everyone sees or accepts things the way you do. Historical and cultural baggage can "color" the way people look at things. Even the simplest things like choice of colors, gestures, conversation distance; time scheduling, etc. could become painful issues.

·         Make sure you know someone in that society that can bring you "at level" with local habits. Convince yourself that this person is aware of the latest slang and habit-changes in the target area.

·         Try to find out what really intrigues this society. Different cultural groups have different ways of catching each other's attention. In Caribbean communities, for instance, the joke-sketch style is what catches the attention. Serious ads don't even work when you try to convince them to pay taxes!

·         Always ask several people within that culture what they think of your product/service. The more opinions you can gather, the better your insight will be in possible hurdles you may encounter.

·         Keep an eye on developments. What's generally accepted today may be abandoned tomorrow. Nothing is more awkward than trying to look "cool" by using stuffy, outdated terms.

Before anything else, though, try to figure out the level and criteria of acceptance. In Europe it's generally accepted to use stronger language and show more nudity or cruelty on mass media than in the U.S. On the other hand, Americans have a more "open" attitude toward each other in a conversation than Europeans. Yes, the world is developing into a global village, but we're not there yet. Not by far. So while we're working on it, respect local cultures?(Marques, 2001, The Importance of Recognizing Culture in Marketing)

 

 

Zooming in on the clients: a more detailed view.

Realize that, although there may be plenty of potential clients out there, you want to focus in on the ones that will provide you (or your organization) the highest satisfaction in return for what you provide them. "A small number of clients typically generate most of a business?s sales and profits." (Slutsky, 1992, How to get clients, p. 3) Slutsky continues, "To begin to understand where you might improve the quality of your client base, create different categories, then see into which ones your clients fall. Discover what they have in common and group them accordingly."

Slutsky (1992) provides us with 4 helpful hints in order to identify our target group, given the product or service we formulated in our mission statement. He recommends that, for every potential client we want to consider, we should ask these questions:

1.      Does the client need [my] product or service?

2.      Can the client use [my] product or service in quantities now or in the future?

3.      Does [my] product or service meet the client's specifications?

4.      Can the client afford my product or service? (p. 6)

Slutsky's book focuses in-depth in the target group issue by explaining the most important things to keep in mind when dealing with clients:

1.      Identify the less profitable part of your business and skip it!

2.      Establish credibility to attract your target group

3.      Persistence is the key to success in reaching your target group..

 

Implications of each idea:

1.      Identify the less profitable part of your business and skip it!

  • "20% of your profits create 80% of your headaches. For example, you might have 10 clients, 8 of which are just great but 2 of which create 80% of your problems. My rule says that if you sacrifice the 20% of your profits that create 80% of your headaches, you?ll end up making 30% more profit." (Slutsky, 1992, p.4)
  • "To reach your long-term goals and build the type of business you envision, you have to consider turning away the types of clients that don't fit the profile" (p. 5).

2.      Establish credibility to attract clients.

  • Slutsky suggests using credentials, awards, and publishing your work as ways to establish credibility toward and attract those clients you want to focus on.

3.      Persistence is the key to success in reaching your target group. We can learn from children.

§         Slutsky illustrates this point with the example of a child nagging her mom to go out and play. The child persists at least 16 times, after which the mother finally yells "Okay! Get the hell out and come back in half an hour!" (p.134). He then mentions the book "Green Eggs and Ham", by Dr. Seuss, about a salesman named Sam-I-Am, and a Cat. Sam-I-am never quits in trying to "sell" the cat a new product until the cat tries it, just to make Sam-I-Am shut up. Slutsky reasons that children learn how to persist from the books they read, and apply it in their life. So why can't we in reaching our target group?


You've been doing great! Here's the link to: Lesson 7