Mirror mirror on the wall...
Who are the best customers of them all?
Many of our clients have "Customer/Member Growth" as a core objective for 2013 ... which is great! But, as a true consultant - I'd like to make one MINOR edit. Change that objective to:
Growth of THE RIGHT Customer/Member.
When you are focusing on the RIGHT customer, your universe shrinks and you can become more efficient with your budget. As a marketing director and a leader on the management team, I would rather report to the Board that we grew our customer base with slightly fewer productive and profitable folks than tons of "riff-raff" (using technical, professional vernacular).
You can acquire the very best prospects through mirror modeling. Focus your efforts on those people who "look like" your current best customers.
Pretend, for a minute, that you could take one of your customers and stick them in a Xerox machine. Who would you pick? Someone with the highest deposits? The most impressive loan balances? The most services per household? Would they have checking? Would they religiously use their debit card?
Your answer may be different than the credit union's down the street or the community bank from across town. You need to define exactly what kind of customer you want.
Once you've identified them, pull an address file of every one of your current customers who meet the criteria.
Think of your neighborhood. I'll bet most of your neighbors look a bit like you. Maybe it's an area with a gaggle of young families with kids. Or it's a flock of empty nesters. The socio-economic law of averages says that birds of a feather tend to flock together. And this can be a powerful tool for targeting.
By defining a narrow target and geo-focusing your marketing efforts to those zip+4s with the highest concentration of your best customers, you'll have a significantly better strategic effort than if you simply target those who live within 1-2 miles of your branch network.
You can also have a message with a laser focus. Understand your best customers: What are their pain points? Why did they choose you? Why do they stay with you? What life stages are they living through? What products are they most likely to have? How are they most likely to use them? Once you understand your best customers, you'll better understand how to communicate to your most desired prospects: What products they are most likely to need with you. How they are most likely to use them. What their key purchase criteria is.
With a little upfront homework and a mirror modeling strategy, you can retain your best customers through better understanding, you'll know where they live to find more of them and you'll know how to talk to them. That is a powerful marketing formula that will make you the "fairest of them all."
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