Now you would think this would be a no-brainer, but sad to say it is not. Most businesses do not segment their market to those potential clients that likely have enough money to be a good fit for them.
Market segmentation is going to be an ongoing theme for the next couple of months in our iQ Marketing Newsletter because it is so darn important if you want to get profitable clients.
Sifting Through To Find The Most Profitable Clients
Now one of the things that would be nice to know in your search for clients would be to find out if they actually have the money to pay you right? In fact, that should be the first self-filter that you use for ALL customers. Are you targeting the right prospects?
This is an interview that I did with one of the best copywriters alive today. We talk about segmentation and what you need to do to find the best clients that are going to make you the most money.
In our chat, we talk about why it is so important to know who you are marketing to and just exactly who is your very best clients really are. The only way that you can find this out is through market segmentation.
What this means is simply that you need to know who is going to spend the most money with you and to concentrate on going after those clients with everything you got!
Once you know who this is and you know how much they bring in, then you can figure out how much you can spend to get those clients. The more you spend smartly, the more profit you are going to bring in. However, most companies do not have a clue who their best and most profitable clients are or how much profit they bring in. So, they have no clue how much their marketing budget should be for them.
Once you do get this figured out, you will be able to outspend your competition and gain marketing share and gain it fast! Once you can outspend them, then you put the pedal to the metal and you just keep on doing that and pretty soon you will be the market leader. This is, of course, assumes that you have at least a decent product with good customer service. This is how you go from being merely profitable, to being downright lucrative.
Do you see the Problem here? Watch the video and we discuss how to solve this…
Then to help you a little bit more, I am going to give a really cool source that I guarantee that can point you in the right direction that I bet you have never heard of… and this one goes State by State. You can thank me later.
Click Here and then click on your State and look at what is there.
Keep in mind, when looking for your most profitable clients, make sure that you are truly communicating with them. Here is a link to an article that is all about that.
Here is the full interview.
Andrew Anderson: 00:01 Hey Dan, how are you doing today?
Dan Kennedy: 00:02 I’m doing great. How are you?
Andrew Anderson: 00:03 I’m doing fantastic. I’m talking to Dan Kennedy and the hardest man the world would get a hold of and it’s sunny out in Cleveland today. So miracles never cease.
Dan Kennedy: 00:10 There you go.
Andrew Anderson: 00:15 Yup. The two, two-part question here. I’ll make it real quick. Uh, since I’m a big believer and we don’t know what we don’t know. What’s the one question that people don’t ask you about marketing that they should? That’s the first question. And then the last question is trotters or pacers.
Dan Kennedy: 00:31 So the first one is, is there is a variable in there. So there’s, you know, different people don’t ask different questions and there’s different questions, right… Somewhat for different situations. I would say that the two places,
Dan Kennedy: 00:54 I’ll give you three, three places people error in most, um, one is in not trying to calculate, calculate, measure, and use a differential customer value rather than averaged customer value. And therefore they, they aren’t very discriminatory in who they set out to get and in what they can afford to spend to get them. So in consulting on marketing, one of the questions I have to ask that rarely is the answer volunteered, it has to be asked for and it usually has to be pressed for is what’s your maximum allowable. Meaning what’s the absolute maximum you’ll pay to get a lead? What’s the absolute maximum? More importantly, you’ll pay to get a customer, client or patient? Because that number now governs everything that can be done and can’t be done. And most people get to that number without differential value. So for example, if they have a, um, a shoe store.
Dan Kennedy: 02:27 So there’s a guy right in the little shopping center I go to all the time who just opened a Red Wing franchised shoe store and I don’t have high hopes for him, but I have best wishes for him. But most people owning that business, if they could answer the maximum allowable question or would go get a number to answer it, it would be based on what’s a customer worth to me say in a year. And so they would take their total sales and they were divided by the total number of customers and they would find that a customer is worth, let’s say $200 to them and if they work at a 50 percent margin, they would say a $100 and then they would come up with a number they were comfortable with, less than $100 in both cases, which even that’s not necessarily correct, but they would come up with a number less than $100 that they were comfortable with and they would set that as their maximum allowable.
Dan Kennedy: 03:28 Now they would never go figure out, gee, a customer with four kids all needing shoes is worth more than a than a customer with one kid and they’re worth more than a customer with no kids. And so the maximum allowable ought to be different forever.
Dan Kennedy: 03:50 So that, that whole thinking process does not occur. Those questions don’t get asked. And the information never gets used to variably weight. Um, investment in marketing. Does that make sense to you?
Andrew Anderson: 04:03 Absolutely!
Dan Kennedy: 04:05 Okay. The second way they, the second most common error then is in a single message to multiple constituencies. And so it’ll either be one big broad, here’s who we are, what we do, and here’s the 52 things we got message,
Dan Kennedy: 04:34 Or a, it will at least acknowledged there are different constituencies, but it will still try and lump them all into the same message. Um, example, if you own a big house with a big basement, um, then these five things we do will interest you.
Dan Kennedy: 04:53 If you live in an apartment, then these three things we do will interest you, but it’ll all be in the same message. One Ad, one Website, one VSL (video sales letter), one whatever.
Dan Kennedy: 05:07 And increasingly people have a sense of entitlement for two things. What is specifically for them and instant, on demand. I don’t have the time to talk about the second, but the first is obvious in this, in this conversation. So if there’s five constituencies, the smart marketing play is five completely separate marketing systems under one umbrella as if you were really running five different businesses.
Dan Kennedy: 05:47 The third place people error, most commonly in marketing discussions, is having advertising and marketing and selling separated as if they were three different functions instead of one integrated function. And often that’ll be coupled with conflict between franchisor and Franchisee or, um, corporate C-Suite and salespeople in the street. Um, I’ve a picture, it’s of a boardroom and there’s like 12 people sitting around the conference table in the boardroom and they’re all pointing at each other.
Dan Kennedy: 06:39 And so this is. No, no, no, this is your, this is your responsibility sales. No, no, no. This is your responsibility advertising, uh, as opposed to everybody putting their heads together and creating an integrated process. It. So you see bad follow up on prospects, for example, because, uh, the C-SUITE says, well, salespeople should follow up on prospects. Um, and so that’s the third area where I wind up doing a lot of work and difficult work is, is fighting for integration rather than separation.
Dan Kennedy: 07:24 Um, your second question, uh, there’s one breed, there’s two gates trot and pace. Um, I own and drive both. I’m just bought it. The yearling sale yesterday, a $25,000 Trotter, um, no real preference to have bought a trotter, might just as easily have body Pacer, um, from a ownership and from a driving standpoint, they each have their pluses and minuses. Is that enough to appease your curiosity?
Andrew Anderson: 08:01 Yeah, I was just curious. Usually, someone has a preference. But I know you are a driver too.
Dan Kennedy: 08:05 Some people will, will sloppily call them all trotters and at one time, way back, they all were. The trout is the natural, uh, original gate of Standardbreds pacing was a taught gate. We have evolved all the way to the port point now that there are pacer, bloodlines and trotter bloodlines, but you will hear old timers say, I’m going to the Trotters tonight. Um, and they really don’t mean that. They mean they’re going to the racetrack and there will be trot races and there will be pace races,
Andrew Anderson: 08:43 Right! Yeah. Yeah, cool, we had both growing up. Each have their different….
Dan Kennedy: 08:51 Were you around a business?
Andrew Anderson: 08:53 We had seven. Don’t know why, but the number shoveled a lot of the, you know, what?
Dan Kennedy: 09:00 One of the greatest innovations from the time I left young at the time I came back and the entire industry was the open-ended shit wagon with the ramp. You could use a wheelbarrow instead of a bucket. You had the basket. You had to hoist, that that. That was a big breakthrough in the business.
Dan Kennedy: 09:19 All right!…
Andrew Anderson: 09:25 Thank you very much for your time. I appreciate it. That was great a answer. Thank you.
