What Kind of Customer do You Want?

As marketers, we look at the customers as our final step in our strategy.

They  are our purpose, the reason for everything we do – even when I talk about social media marketing, content marketing, e-mail marketing, SEM, SEO  and the list can go on and on an on.

We fight for our customer. We love our customer. We want to make our customer an evangelist for our brand. We do everything we can for our customer so we can make him more loyal and eager to share more data/information/of his behavour with us.

We create for our customers and we innovate for them. We want them to have a better life by using our brand.

What do we really want from our customers? Money? Time? Loyalty? Data? Friends? Likes & Shares?

Answering this question helps me, as a marketer, to find the purpose of my brand.

But there is a much more important question to answer:

What kind of customer do I want?

Because some customers just give away their money for my brand. Other customers give their money and some of their data. Some of them only give their data, without money. But some of them even give their time.

Do we want a customer who gives more money? Do we want a more loyal customer? Do we want more data? Or do we want to make them our brand evangelists? Do we want them to connect with us on social media? Do we want shares and likes? Do I want whatever the brands wants?

What kind of customer do I want for my brand?

This is not that kind of article that’s teaching you more about customers’ characteristics, more about how to deal with them, how to connect with them or how to make them give you more money.

I wanted to wrote this article to help you understand what kind of customer you want and what kind of customer  you have right now!

Because the kind of customer you have today will help you make your product better.

Think about Apple. Yeah, I know. Everybody is talking about this big brands that just rule the world with their marketing strategy, communications and branding. But just look a little bit at its customers’ behavior.

What is Apple doing with its customers? It’s turning them into heroes in their community.

A designer who creates a great website for a client is a hero for that person. A mother who can talk to her daughter and teach her how to cook with Facetime is a hero. A photographer who sends pictures from a war is a hero.

Apple doesn’t have a regular or common customer, Apple has heroes who act and think differently.

 

Now back to you:  ask yourself this question and try to answer it as honest as you can.

What kind of customer do you want today and tomorrow?