Who is my primary customer? A marketer's point of view

My CMO had recently talked about the challenge for marketers to clearly identify the 'customers' we are trying to serve. There are frequent demands from various stakeholders: end customers, sales, other marketing programs and field teams, investors, board, etc. How do we marketers figure out who our primary customer is so we can focus our engagements with them?

As I was thinking further about this, I came across an article in Harvard Business Review's latest November 2010 issue titled "Stress-Test Your Strategy: The 7 Questions to Ask" by Robert Simons. Not surprisingly, his first question is whether companies really know the answer to "Who is your primary customer?" His main argument is that companies often struggle to serve too many customers and in the end fail to serve any one customer really well. His example of McDonalds shifting focus from franchisees to ultimate consumers as their primary customer which led to their huge success is a great example.

In my experience as a marketer, we simply cannot afford to serve too many constituents effectively at the same time. Besides the endemic resource and budget constraints, it also becomes impractical to really hone in on a strong position and supporting messaging if the efforts are dispersed to address different audiences at the same time. Further, with volume of messages and channels of content distribution exploding these days, it is all the more critical for marketers to stay fixated on one primary customer in order to communicate something of relevance based on continuous engagement and feedback from the audience we are trying to serve.

Consequently, my focus today is on the end customer. The end consumer of our products and solutions is my only primary customer. So, what about all the others who also need to be served: the field, program teams, partners, product organization, etc.? Well, in my view, these others are simply channels to get our message across to the primary customer. These others are not my primary customers. My job is to enable these channels with the right strategy, message, content, etc. so that they can get the right message across to the single primary customer.

Pros and cons of this approach? For one thing, it has helped my team focus on one primary (and most important) audience - the end consumer of our solutions - and generate meaningful and consistently high quality engagements. By constant engagement with this primary customer, we are able to learn iteratively and improve. The challenge has been resetting expectations of some other customers (channels) we have also tried to serve as primary customers in the past. Change is certainly not easy to come!

So, who is your primary customer? What is your experience serving them? Would like to hear your thoughts.

Thanks
Vinay

Blazing hot Indian (Tamil) movie Endiran (Robot) smokes projector in Silicon Valley

As the swashbuckling Superstar Rajni clones fought in amazing configurations towards the end of the movie (in what is generally described as the best 30 minutes of the movie overall), the image on the screen in the movie hall suddenly started to burn and smoke!!! Duh, what timing! We were wondering if this was another special effect, but alas no. The screen just blanked out and all we could see was the warping film and shadow of smoke from the burning film. See photo of the screen.

Well, the audience waited for some time hoping the projector room crew would fix it so we could see the ending. But, no such luck. We were told the projector itself had gone kaput, and there was nothing they could do. So, they gave us all rain checks and asked to come back another day - to finish seeing the last 10 or so minutes of a 2hr 40min movie!!!

Not that I am complaining too much as this movie is indeed worth watching once more. Very cool flick with plenty of amazing action, a thought provoking story line and, amazing dance sequences with plenty of eye candy from Aishwarya Rai. A perfect entertainment treat!

Here's a link to the trailer on YouTube. Go watch the movie.