The Diverse Customer and the Postcard

Published 7 May 2008

Also in this issue: alice's actions

As there are many kinds of potential customers out there, does your product or service cater for all of them? Could it be adapted slightly for each kind of target market? Read my blog post Do you have just one kind of customer? which examines the fact that a single product could be marketed and packaged in a variety of ways towards a wide range of customers, yet still, underneath it all, be the same product.

I would like to take that concept and use it within a postcard format. Why not compose a series of postcards that reflect your customer selection? Each could be adapted to aim at each specific customer, sporting the different aspect that they are attracted to, while spelling out the benefits that reflect how your product/service could best satisfy their needs.

If you haven't done a market analysis of your customer base, now is a great time to start. Have fun thinking of the different kinds of people who could potentially buy your product or service. What are their characteristics, their specialities, their preferred choices, their lifestyles, and most of all, their needs? Can you locate a gap in their lives that your product or service could fill?

Now look at what your business is about. Could you adapt the visual impact of your product or service to fit the range of customers out there? That's what products such as washing powder and services such as car insurance have done. Create a number of styles that match your potential customers and get some postcards done to reflect it - pink and fluffy for the girls and fast and shiny for the boys are stereotyped characteristics, but you could be far more subtle in your approach when even just a small change in the headline and the use of another colour could do the trick.

Alternatively, you could just break down your product or service into its component parts, and create a postcard to represent each of them. This will allow the customer to understand your business and what it does in small, bite-sized chunks, or to select the areas that they are most interested in. Present them appropriately in a layered stand, or in a matching corporate folder to hold them all together.

Ask Alice a question or visit my blog to find out more.

Alice's Action #18 – Get some Feedback

If you read my newsletter last week on referral postcards, you can have a chance to view examples by visiting my postcards page in my website. This idea has also been adapted into a feedback form to gain more marketing knowledge about what your customers really want.
How do you go about getting referrals, testimonials and feedback from your customers? Remember it is much easier to work with past or current customers than it is to get new ones! They are a source of much information to improve your business and gain marketing ideas, as well as more work.