We communicate with stories. Trivial or profound, everything we do and everything that happens translates into a story. “Guess what happened at work today.” “She took a trip to Europe and fell in love.” “How about those Sharks?” As the heroes of our lives, we each are a story. The same goes for your customers. Your customers are stories.

What is not a story? Market segments are not stories. “Dads and men in their 20s and 30s that like sports and beer” - not a story. “Echo-boomers living in medium-sized cities” - not a story. Market segments are cardboard cutouts, descriptions of what a typical customer looks like.

What is a story? Drew McLellan has written a couple of great how-to posts on avoiding he trap of demographic market segmentation and instead creating the perfect customer. It comes down to this: weave a story of an individual human being whom you wish to be your ideal customer. Put yourself in her skin and shoes. Empathize with her joys and troubles and discoveries and disappointments. Imagine who she is, who she aspires to be, what challenges she faces, what conflicts she experiences, what she does, what goes through her mind…

What you and your company must do to satisfy your ideal customer’s needs will emerge from that ideal customer’s story. What’s more, because communities comprise individuals, your ideal customer’s story will be part of her community’s narrative. Through your ideal customer’s story,  you’ll narrate her community’s story. Picture an individual, picture a community.

What’s your ideal customer’s story?

Tags: community-building, identity-marketing, market-research, marketing-strategy, niche-marketing, people, sustainable-relationships

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 16th, 2008 at 7:08 pm. You can follow comments to this entry through the comments RSS feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.