Identifying Best Customers

Viewpoint by Erik Long, Associate Partner

In a world of global competition, media saturation, and more sophisticated and evolving customers, companies should gather insights about their current, past, and future customers in order to sustain competitive advantage. In the past, there wasn't always an efficient way to generate this kind of customer insight. But with today's customer research technologies and analytic methods, companies have few barriers to gathering this information. There are many ways to identify, track, and serve the most profitable customers in the most complex markets driven by compelling customer insights. Key questions about your customers that you must be prepared to answer include:

• Why do customers buy (or not buy) my products/services?
• How are my customers and non-customers segmented in terms of the needs and benefits they seek from purchases?
• Which customers present the most economically attractive opportunities?
• How can I grow share of my most attractive customer and prospective customer segments?
• How well do we deliver on the promise of our brand(s), and is our brand promise relevant to our best customers?

With answers to these basic questions, you are ready to develop powerful, customer-centric marketing programs that will increase your odds of winning, keeping, and attracting more customers.