You’ve heard it before: one size doesn’t fit all. Just because you provide a product or a service that can help businesses grow, doesn’t mean every business out there is worth going after. Marketing and sales teams alike need boundaries or guidelines. Who are we calling? Who are we trying to reach? Without this focus, marketing is just throwing content around to anyone who wants to read it and sales is wasting their time scheduling meetings with contacts who aren’t decision makers. And trust me, if you’ve ever worked with a marketing or sales team, you know what it’s like when they’re not focused…
Client success staff and account managers alike will tell you the best clients are a pleasure to work with as well as profitable to the organization. Not-fun, poor-fit clients take more time and can cause you to lose sight of the end goal. They’re usually less profitable too.
What makes a client a great fit is different for every company. Perhaps for one B2B company, their best fit clients are in the manufacturing vertical with revenue over $20M and utilizing a specific CRM and purchasing system. For another, ideal clients could be located in greater Chicago with 15-50 employees and an active social media marketing strategy. The client demographics your organization holds most dear are your compass on the journey to finding and cultivating more best-fit clients.
“In God we trust, all others must bring data.” – W. Edwards Deming
The great thing about data is that it’s data. Data doesn’t lie. As marketers, we are often asked how an email marketing campaign is going or whether a new TV advertisement is doing well. In order to determine the success of a campaign, marketers usually compare it to previous campaigns or industry standards (which, again, are based on data), and calculate the ROI for each tactic within the campaign. Spoiler alert: Marketing is largely a numbers game.
As a marketer reviews the data from a campaign to determine success, they should also review their client data to find key trends. A great place to start identifying trends in client demographics is to ask your client success team to provide a list of your best clients (typically defined as clients who are actively using your products/services and who are engaging with your team). You’ll be surprised what just 10 great clients can provide in terms of data!
- Geography
- Vertical
- Business model (i.e., B2B, B2C, both or B2B2C)
- Annual revenue
- Employee count
These are just a few examples of data that can be accessed quickly and examined to identify trends.
Once you identify the profile of the best-fit client, you can score your prospects based upon the attributes they share (or don’t share) with your best-fit clients. This allows marketing to communication directly to these targeted prospects via social media, targeted ads, email marketing and events. Understanding your best-fit client’s vertical alone can impact which conferences and trade shows you attend, the content of your email marketing and where you buy online advertisements.
Right On Interactive works with organizations to not only identify best-fit clients but also cultivate the relationship between the client and the brand. You know, that whole Win. Keep. Grow. thing.
“It costs 6–7 times more to acquire a new customer than retain an existing one.” – Bain & Company
We help businesses find their best-fit customers through our 3D Scoring methodology. We help businesses grow one-time clients into customers for life through our Customer Lifecycle Marketing platform. Learn how Right On Interactive can help your business grow more relationships and revenue by reading our ebook, What is Lifecycle Marketing? today.
