Target Customers - Love Us, Like Us, Learn Us

Target Customers - Love Us, Like Us, Learn Us

I would like to theorize that businesses have three types of customers.  Those that Love Them, those that only Like Them and those that still need to Learn about them.

Here is the difference between them.

- Learn Us: Customers that have little to no idea that your company exists.  Or, they did some business with you in the past but it was sufficiently long ago that they are starting fresh.

- Like Us: Customers that do some business with you but possibly only in a couple of your product lines.  You are most likely a secondary source for them while your competition is the primary.  You get called either when the competition is out of product or they are price shopping to keep the competition honest.

- Love Us: These are your cash cows.  These customers buy everything from you in large quantities.  They know what you have and they understand the value proposition you provide.

Here is how to treat each of the three types of customers:

- Learn Us: This is where a lot of your marketing budget will go.  You need to educate a new group of customers into why they should buy from you.  These customers are at the top of the funnel.  If you do not keep that pipeline full then you will eventually run out of customers as Like Us and Love Us customers fall off.

- Like Us: These customers are the cheapest to convert to Love Us.  They already are familiar with your company and how you operate.  Spend time figuring out what your competition does better than you or where your competition is falling down and go after them.

- Love Us: While many companies spend a lot of time with their Love Us customers because they are easy and fun it is better to spend more time with the other categories of target customers.  But, beware of ignoring your Love Us customers.  Your Love Us is your competition's Like Us and they will be out to steal them from you.