Color Code your Customers

When it comes to marketing, intelligence of your market is vital. Not knowing who your customers are is kind of like going into battle and not knowing who the enemy is. You end up shooting every direction, wasting a lot of time and bullets.

If you really want to be prepared to dominate your market you must come up with a system to market to your customers, and organize them appropriately. Behold color coding…

Customers are simply a color.

Customers will enter your organization as yellow, and depending on how you interact with them will move towards either green or red.

So here’s how it works:

Yellow

These are your new customers, they are brand new and have no brand alliance and no preconceived notions of your business. They are interested in what you offer, but aren’t sure if you are right for the long term. These customers are hard to attract and cost a lot of money. So make sure you provide them with good experience.

Blue (Positive)

With a positive interaction and experience, yellow customers will slide up the scale to blue. These customers are satisfied with your offering, but aren’t loyal yet. They have no reason to stray, but if your competitor gives them a reason, they can be tempted. You’ll need to work a little harded to make these customers super loyal.

Orange (Negative)

With a negative interaction at the yellow stage a customer will slip to Orange. Negative interactions can come from many sources; poor customer service, higher than expected prices, poor shopping experience, etc. But once a customer is Orange, it will take a little work to get them back to the positive. As a Orange, the customer is looking for alternatives, they are examining your competitors to see if they will offer better services in future transactions, but all hope is not lost. They did choose to interact with you, that means there was something about you that they initially liked. With the right followup they can be salvaged. Make sure you keep your ears to the ground to listen for these types of customers. And do what it takes to solve their problem. Bribe them if you have to. A discount on their next purchase is a small price to pay versus investing in the advertising necessary to attract a brand new customer to replace them.

Green (Positive)

If a customer has multiple positive experiences at the Blue level they will eventually transition to Green. This is the goal, every Green customer is super loyal, and will talk positivly about your business. Greens are also more forgiving of less than perfect experience. They begin to see your company as a partner, not as an adversary, and this is crucial to keeping long term customers. Greens are also the most profitable customers, so do whatever it takes to keep them, and learn from them so you can create more of them.

Red (Negative)

Red is the final step on the negative chain. These customers are very dissatisfied with your company, and they aren’t afraid to tell everyone about it. They are happy to shop with your customers, and are more than willing to beat up your staff over price any chance they get. These are the customers you need to remove from your marketing lists, and forget them. They can’t be salvaged. The only thing to do is learn how not to have your customers hit this color again in the future. With Reds it simple, you screwed up, you let a perfectly good customer go to waste. But, it is what it is, move on and count that customer as what they call stupid tax. Hopefully you learned something, and will do better the next go around.

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