Why it’s good business to ignore (some) customers

The problem with targeting everyone is that everyone is different. As Seth Godin eloquently puts it ‘Everyone is not your customer’. In other words, trying to target everyone is the same as targeting no-one. Your message ends up lost in the void of marketing monotony, surrounded by a cacophony of similarly generic businesses.

Certainly, few people are going to hate the messages you send them. But few people will really love them either – and that’s the truly critical factor in building connections with the people that matter the most.

The solution to marketing monotony is adopting an effective approach. This means crafting a tailored message that resonates with the people who are most likely to respond (send an enquiry, make a purchase, donate money…). Unfortunately, many businesses do NOT utilise an effective marketing approach. Using preliminary data gathered from BML’s own brand audit research, only 50% of businesses know who their ideal customers are and how best to communicate with them.

Even more surprisingly, just 27% know where they sit in the market and understand how they can make their business or products stand out. The concept of effective marketing is not difficult to grasp. So, why then do so many businesses persist in creating marketing messages that are targeted at no-one? The answer is that targeting a specific audience requires the business to take the bold and somewhat counter-intuitive step of ignoring large portions of the market.

Consider the last significant purchase you made, such as a smartphone. For most people, a smartphone is an essential tool and there are a plethora of smartphone manufacturers each offering extensive product ranges for you to choose from. Despite the choice available, the core feature used by most smartphone users is very similar.

A survey from the Express in March 2017 shows the top uses of mobile phones in the UK. It shows the top 10 daily uses of smartphones according to polled responses:

1. Text – 88%
2. Email – 70%
3. Facebook – 62%
4. Camera – 61%
5. Reading news – 58%
6. Online shopping – 56%
7. Checking the weather – 54%
8. WhatsApp – 51%
9. Banking – 45%
10. Watching videos on YouTube – 42%

What’s surprising about these stats (other than the fact that ‘calling’ doesn’t even make the top ten uses of a mobile phone!), is that these features are available on nearly any device, no matter which brand or model. If any phone on the market can perform the functions you need, then why do people choose one manufacturer/model over another?

The answer is that manufacturers successfully focus their products – and importantly the stories that sell those products – at specific customer segments. People in the various segments respond to those stories and end up buying the product that closest fits their personal needs.

Apple’s iPhone is a beautiful, sophisticated and easy-to-use product range targeted at fashion conscious people willing to pay a premium for high-quality, innovative design. In contrast, global industrial brand, Cat, produce a range of much cheaper, ultra-tough mobile phones designed to withstand the rigours of the construction industry.

Both phones carry out the core functions most people require perfectly well, but if you are looking for a phone to impress your boardroom colleagues, the Cat is unlikely to have the desired effect. If you spend all day on building sites surrounded by brick dust and mortar, then an iPhone, no matter how desirable it looks, is unlikely to be top of your list (at least not without the addition of an especially rugged case, which opens a whole new buying conversation!).

The reason we decide which phone to pick comes down to the way we react to the marketing stories that each business tells us.

Ultimately, the purchasing decision is an emotional one. According to this 2015 study into the science of customer emotions by Harvard Business Review, “Hundreds of ‘emotional motivators’ drive consumer behaviour”. From feeling a sense of thrill, to a desire to stand out from the crowd, purchase decisions are primarily based on how well you feel the product or service you are buying suits your own individual needs.

Like Cat and Apple, the most successful companies focus on creating great products and services that fulfil a specific market need. They then tailor their marketing to connect the benefits of those products and services to the people most likely to experience a positive emotional response. Successful businesses are comfortable with the fact that large groups of the market might be turned off by their offering.

Why? Because they understand that customers outside of their target groups are looking for something different, an experience that their business does not offer. Yes, they might attract the odd few outside of their core sphere, but that is more by chance than design and you can’t build a successful marketing strategy on chance.

The need to make an emotional connection with the customer applies to all businesses types, including B2B. ‘But businesses don’t run on emotion’, I hear you say. Well, they do. In fact, there is often more emotion attached to a business purchasing decision than a consumer one, because people’s jobs, reputations and livelihoods are often at stake.

If you’re still sceptical, then you might want to read this great article on business2community.com. The main takeaways from Liz O’Neill’s insightful post are that emotions matter even more than logic and reasoning in B2B buying:

• Only 14% of B2B buyers perceive a real difference in B2B supplier offerings.
• Only 31% of prospective customers think B2B brands provide a personal value.
• Only 8.5% of buyers who see NO personal value will pay a higher price for a product.
• 68% of buyers who see a personal value will pay a higher price for a service.

This means forgetting about the idea that business to business marketing needs to be corporate and dry. You are far more likely to have success when you can clearly make your business stand out and demonstrate personal value to your customers.

Focusing on specific groups of customers lies at the heart of effective marketing, which ultimately translates to maximum results from the minimum expenditure of resources. If you want your marketing to be effective, you need to understand what you do, why you do it, which individuals are going to experience the highest benefit and – most crucially – be able to explain to them why it matters!

With the right strategy in place, all that’s required is the drive to focus your energy on the relatively few people who’ll see the most value in your business and the confidence to ignore the ones that don’t. That is marketing effectiveness in a nutshell and it takes the right combination of strategic thinking, hard work and guts. It’s not easy, but get it right and you may find that ignoring customers has far more benefits than you think.