I know what the obvious answer to that question is: "it's the person (or company) who buys from us" and no one can argue with that definition, but a deeper understanding of the existing customer base is an important step in the marketing programme for any business. Understanding more about your current customers helps you to:
§ sell them more of what they're looking for
§ communicate better with them
§ attract more like them
One way to understand you customers is to "segment" them -- for example, if you sell direct to the public you might segment your existing customer base by age, lifestyle, occupation, income, or a host of other criteria: which ones are relevant will depend on your business and the products or service that you sell.
If you are in the business-to-business market, you might "segment" your customers by size of business, type of business, location or, again, a host of other criteria depending on your products or services.
But there's another way of looking at it: ask yourself these three questions
§ Who pays the invoice?
§ Who places the order?
§ Who benefits from the product/service?
Now, these may be three different individuals within a customer company -- but by asking yourself the question is, it may help you decide how to communicate to with that company - it may need different communication messages to each of the three people for example.
To illustrate the value of this sort of analysis, consider the marketing communications carried out by Intel, manufacturers of the Pentium processor (computer chip). We’ve all seen their recent TV advertising (aimed at us as consumers) for a product that is simply a component within the product that the consumer actually buys (i.e. the computer)
But what Intel realised was that "who pays the invoices" (i.e. the computer manufacturers like Dell or Compaq) had other chip manufacturers they could buy from; and maybe they’d make their decision chiefly on the price of the chips (and Intel aren't the cheapest in the market!).
So who places the orders? Well, again, the computer manufacturers - but could Intel find a way of influencing them?
YES - through "who benefits from the product": in other words you and me, the computer users. Hence the high-profile (and expensive!) consumer TV advertising campaigns convincing us to look for the "Intel inside" logo on the computer we buy.
So even though we may never actually buy anything from Intel (in terms of ordering from them or paying one of their invoices) we're certainly a "customer" in Intel's eyes and by successfully communicating with us through their TV campaigns they have maintained their dominant position in the highly competitive computer chip market.
So try looking at your “customers” in these different ways - you might be surprised at the ideas that suggest themselves to you!
