A customer is a terrible thing to lose, because you lose a lifetime of revenue, not just this month's spread or fee, and because you have to acquire a new one to get back to even. Nothing that the objective is no more or less than increasing the effectiveness and efficiency with which we attract and retain customers, I submit we can redesign service marketing, as follows. Why I'd like to suggest that, while demographic information has a place in helping us determine market size, location, product usage and market segment growth, we've done it to death. While keeping an eye on such data to see how big markets are, and are going to get, we should move on to why people behave as they do. After all, no one ever bought anything simply because they were 29 to 44, lived in city and had to gone to college.
People buy things, especially services, because they want to.
Demographics are unable to explain why people act as they do, why they choose one provider over another, why they stay or leave, why they become brand loyal, how shopping behavior is undertaken, the effects of perceived risks or even what those risks are. Demographic data don't explain why people behave as they do. They don't touch motivation, perceived needs, actual needs, fears and the like. The potential of this market is mind-boggling because most people who need help are getting none, so the marketing task is not to wrest them from a competitor, butt from nothingness, ignorance and even fear. The first mistake potential service providers make is assuming they know what such people want, not recognizing that prospects don't even understand the words and terms used in promotional materials.