The right customer is the one who satisfies the ultimate goals of a site. These customers will repeatedly visit and purchase from a site, use a site s functionality, become site evangelists, and perform the desired actions that generate the greatest profits for a site. Focusing marketing efforts on acquiring and retaining only the right customers will exponentially increase the effectiveness of each dollar spent on marketing. Define and Redefine the Right Customer Begin with a determination of a customer s desired action. Once the ideal action is decided, marketers should attempt to describe those customers most likely to perform that action.
Data analysis can provide sophisticated illustrations of customer behavior and site performance.
The ongoing deployment of acquisition and retention strategies will provide hard feedback that allows the right customer to be further redefined. Acquire the Right Customers As soon as the right customer is identified, acquisition strategies targeting that customer should be developed. Targeting these pre-selected customers is important in order to decrease the cost of attracting new site users. Budgets will not be wasted on visitors with minimal potential for long-term site use. Marketing dollars can be used towards more efficient spending on other areas.