Jeff Bell
By Jeff Bell
Sales & Marketing Results
Who are your best customers? If you sell your products to consumers (people, not companies) you might be able to list them by names. If you can’t you should and here’s why.
One, any smart business owner who knows who their “best” customers are, either by name or by demographics, knows they are the most “profitable” customers. Two, if you know who your most profitable customers are, you stand a better chance at being able to go find more like the ones you already have. And three, your most profitable customers can be a source of even higher increased profits.
If you don’t understand all this, there’s still an opportunity to find highly profitable customers with little or no research. How? By targeting “baby boomers” and here’s why.
In the US there are more than 108 million people over age 45 — a group with more than $2 trillion in annual spending power. And of those 108 million, the nation’s 78 million baby boomers make up 28% of the U.S. population AND they own more than 77% of all financial assets.
My bet a lot of them are already buying from you (and you may not even know it). If baby boomers are already on your customer list, you have a unique opportunity to offer them highly profitable products and services. Why? Because “boomers” are willing to pay premium prices (read ‘higher profits’) for things that save them time and make life more convenient for them.
Specifically what types of premium products or services are boomers willing to pay for? Here’s a personal example. Take the furnace and air conditioner both you and I have in our homes. For years my wife would bug me every 6 months or so to check the furnace fi lter and change it to reduce the amount of dust that seems to accumulate on our furniture.
I’d be busy and do it begrudgingly. Or sometimes I would fl at out forget it and a year would go by without a filter change. Well 6 months ago a strange smell of an electric motor burning started coming out of our air vents. I had forgotten to change the filter for “a while” and the blower motor burned out because of the blocked airflow.
We called a local HVAC company and their technician came over. I may get the numbers slightly wrong here but after looking at the furnace, he gave us 2 options. Four hundred for a new blower OR about $200 for the blower if we signed up for their monthly maintenance program of $10 per month. It included quarterly checkups where the technician would come out, inspect the furnace and change the filter if necessary,
thus avoiding another motor burnout situation.
Doing the quick math in my head I thought okay, I’ll save $200 on my repair bill if I sign up for $10/month and they monitor this for me so I don’t have to. It’s a 20 month payback on the monthly fee so it’s worth it to me to sign up for the service so I don’t have to worry about it and it will keep my wife happy.
Bottom line, it’s a CONVENIENCE issue for me that I’m happy to pay for. And I bet, no I know, other boomers like me think the same way. We have the money and it is one less thing I have to worry about in my life, so why not pay for it.
Now think about your company. Your products or services. What convenience could you deliver to boomers, at a premium price, that although they could do it themselves, they just might be willing to pay someone to do it for them?
For a grocery store, could you offer a premium priced monthly program for delivering weekly groceries to your affluent customers (so they don’t have to come to the store to shop for them in person)?
If you’re a day spa or offer massages, could you charge a monthly fee where customers get fi rst dibs on the best, most convenient days and times to schedule & receive their massages, so they don’t have to work their schedule around them?
Maybe you’re a dentist. For your patients with discolored teeth, could you offer them a monthly or quarterly “club” where they can come in on a set schedule and get their teeth whitened, sort of on a maintenance program, to keep them sparkly white?
Boomers have the money and are willing to pay for these kinds of services. Boomers are probably already in your customer list somewhere. And programs designed especially for boomers can become additional revenue streams for your business, if you know how to create and offer them.
The first step is finding out who your best customers are. Then seeing how many of them fit into the boomer category (born between 1946 and 1964). If you have a significant number of them, your assignment for tomorrow is to start thinking about programs you might test offering them. And even if you don’t have a lot of boomers, your assignment for tomorrow is to start thinking about how you will attract more as customers.
Jeff Bell helps international companies, regional businesses and start-up entrepreneurs successfully grow their businesses by creating highly effective lead generation & marketing systems. If you need to attract more customers with your advertising, request his FREE Special Report at www.TheAdvertisingFormula.com Or you can leave less than fl attering comments or questions about this article on his voice mail at 317-713-1244
