Elements of Customer Development You Control

I talk a bit about this in the booklet (click here to purchase).

For an average client, your merchandise assortment is responsible for +/- 60% of what you sell. If advertising is responsible for 80% of your sales, you've done something wrong. You want customers to buy from you simply because of what you sell.

So you control what you sell.

You control what your customer sees when the customer arrives at your website. Showing every customer the same thing every time worked in 1999, it doesn't work in 2021. Well, it works, but it is highly sub-optimal.

You control the notifications you send to your customer. Every night Clubhouse is sending me a couple of notifications every hour. Most of it is garbage, of course (How To Make $10,000 A Month ... Blurring Boundaries of the Forth Industrial Revolution ... How To Launch A Podcast). But that's not the point. The point is that they're working overtime to let me know to interact with the app. The same concept applies to Orvis. I can get notifications from Rakuten about what retailers want me to buy but I can't get notifications directly from retail brands. Tells you something, doesn't it?

You control every aspect of your email marketing program. Most of us don't personalize anything. My team personalized email campaigns at Nordstrom in 2001. Tells you something, doesn't it? Clients who personalize email campaigns get 10% to 50% gains in productivity, and that greatly accelerates Customer Development.

You control all print marketing activity. Old school catalogers still generate half of their sales from print, stunning as that may sound. They know something about Customer Development that most e-commerce brands fail to understand. Of course, that level of knowledge comes at a cost, a cost that paper reps, printers, and postage mavens love.

You control your loyalty program. Points, discounts, promotions, perks. All of this gets communicated in an outbound manner. Use this real estate wisely.

You control your audio and video efforts. Podcasts. YouTube. Instagram. Tik Tok. Every brand great at Customer Development has a credible Audio/Video program. I've worked with several brands who are essentially old-school television stations, sans linear programming. It's a no-brainer, folks.

You control a lot of stuff, but I'm not interested in itemizing everything you control. I'm interested in seeing you do something to facilitate the Customer Development process.