By Ken Hammock, The Joy FM
Every business needs a continuous flow of new customers and repeat customers. It’s hard enough work to capture customers – those who discover your product and service and then spend their hard-earned money with you.
In order to succeed, you must know who your prime customer is and is not. Focus on the prime. Then, serve those customers well. The prime is your bread and butter, your cake before the icing, the foundation of your business success and sustainability.
Once you’ve connected and grown your prime customers, answer these two questions:
1. Why do some customers consider your business their favorite? In other words, what makes them loyal to you? What separates you from all your competitors?

2. Why have some customers stopped coming? Or rather, why are they not coming back?
You have a loyal following. That’s good. Do all you can to keep them.
You have those who haven’t returned. You need to know if it was a bad experience, dissatisfaction in the product or service, intervention by a competitor, pricing, availability, or some other negative which you might have the opportunity to control. Determine if you can earn a second chance with these former customers.
And to grow your business faster, find the people in the middle of the two questions – those who are indifferent and uncommitted. These are those who haven’t learned enough about you to trust your brand or be an advocate. They may know of you, but not about you. You have not effectively convince this middle audience enough.
Your prime can be captured with targeted media marketing, because they are looking for you. But, the audience in the middle of loving and hating you is where mass media is necessary. Your message has to be told to the mass, and told often enough to build relevancy.
Your brand can never grow at its strongest without those in the middle. But it can most certainly flounder without them. You need those in the middle and you need mass reach.
Growth happens in the middle, not in the extremes. Build a mass media plan that challenges every extreme targeted strategy you’ve embraced in the past. And if you need help, I would love to answer more questions for you.
Contact me when you are ready.
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(Ken Hammock is a 30-year marketing veteran and is the Corporate Engagement Specialist for The JOY FM. You can reach him via email at [email protected])