BlueCapra

Using Technology To Solve Problems and Create Solutions

Who is your ideal customer?

by Leave a Comment

Am I your ideal customer?

Several spoons with beans in them

Photo: Naypong/FreeDigitalPhotos.net

I try to be as frugal as possible.  I do my best to eat simpler, healthier foods.  One of the foods I have chosen to base most of my meals around is legumes.  My favorites are black beans and lentils.  To save money and eliminate any extra sodium or additives, I purchase dried beans and cook them in a pressure cooker.  I normally shop at Wal-mart, but today, my quest for beans took me to Fresh Market in Mobile, AL.

While I was there, I was greeted by more than four workers.  I was told, by the cashier, that she was happy to see me today.  I was asked by the workers in the meat department twice if they could help me (the first time I was just looking).  Besides making me feel valued as a customer, it made me wonder, who is their ideal customer?  (this is not a random thought; I am going through an online class at Free Agent Academy with Jimi Gibson)

I have read that Wal-mart’s ideal customer is a single mom, working full time in a moderate paying job, with two children.  She wants to get in the store, find what she needs, and get home as fast as possible.  Obviously, all Wal-mart’s customers don’t fit that profile, but the marketing and branding of a company is dictated by their ideal customer, as defined by the company.  So, if that is the case, who is Fresh Market’s ideal customer?  Am I their ideal customer?  I may not be, but I do feel valued as a customer and look forward to shopping there again.

Who is your ideal customer (you have one, right)?

How are you using the definition of your ideal customer to improve their experience with your business?

How are you letting the customers know you are different from your competitors?

Practical Small Business Technology Marketing – Part I – Barcodes

by 1 Comment

Technology can have a huge impact on the marketing efforts of small businesses.  Most of the technology is low cost or free but requires time and a little knowledge to take advantage of.  This series of posts will focus on practical examples to apply technology to small business marketing.  In this first post, I will detail some practical ways to implement barcodes into small business marketing, with a focus being on QR barcodes.

QR linking to this post

Smartphones are popular.  Those “magic phones” can do a variety of tasks and most people that have them are rarely out of arm’s reach of the devices.  Most modern smartphones are capable of scanning barcodes through embedded or third-party applications (one such application that I have used is RedLaser).  Through these applications, you can check prices of products online and at local stores as well as get more information on the products themselves.  But not all barcodes are equal; there are many variations to the common (or not so common) barcodes.

The standard barcode that most of us are familiar with is considered a one-dimensional (1D) barcode.  They are printed on practically all products you buy, encoding a limited amount of specific information that businesses use to identify the product.  By utilizing algorithms and encoding methods, more information can be added to the barcode within the same physical space, increasing the density of the information available.  With this extra information, smartphone makers and application designers are able to trigger distinct events, such as links to websites, contact information, and text messages among others.  There are many different ways to encode the data, but one of the most popular is the QR, or Quick Response barcode. [Read more…]