A++ Customers
Target audience' is not our favorite way to refer to customers and clientele. At Studebaker Design Co, we prefer 'community' or 'A++ Customers.'
Your A++ customer is your dream customer. The ones you are obsessed with, and they are obsessed with you. They love your work, product, or service; they pay on time, they don't question your prices, they rant and rave about your brand to their friends and colleagues—they're no work at all. Does this bring a particular customer to mind?
These A++ customers are the ones your brand needs to talk to, solely. Not your B+ or C- customers–not even your A- customers. That audience will find you and consider your product no matter what. They'll inquire and test, they'll ask for discounts or try to tell you how to do your job. They'll waste your time and play with your emotions.
Therefore, focusing on your star customers will fill your cup and keep the lights on. These are the ones you need to talk to, curate your experiences for, intentionally build your brand for. Your brand messaging, tone and voice, and style needs to be directed to the A++ buyers who will see you and fall in love with you.
How do you know what they want to see? How they want to be spoken to? What they need to hear? Start with what you want to offer. Trust that 'people like you' understand the demand or need the solution that inspired you to launch your brand. You share values and beliefs—even fears and frustrations. You have common goals, challenges, taste, and style that set you apart from other brands and led you to think, "I can do it better."
Understand that you're not for everyone, so you shouldn't be talking to everyone. Talk to the people you want to serve and trust the rest will find brands meant for them.
As soon as you start focusing on everyone, it's a race to the bottom. If you stand for everything and serve everyone, you stand for nothing and serve no one.
The more you curate your branding and marketing to your A++ customers, the more they'll tell others like them. The more business you will have.
Send me a note sharing what you want to offer and how you share it with your A++ customers. I want to hear about them.
