Steal These Ideas!: Marketing Secrets That Will Make You a Star, 2nd Edition

Lesson Three: Forget Complicated Clusters and Demographics

There are endless books and studies and doctoral dissertations on long-winded matrix descriptions of customer groups. Most of it is so complicated that you will never be able to create a marketing program to fit the endless customer clusters, as some experts call them, or even to identify these clusters within your customer universe in the first place.

So let's get down to basics. Every company, no matter what, has five customer groups. Some might call these the loyalty ladder or customer pyramid. Fine and dandy. In any event, these groupings are easy to understand and have behavior patterns that will respond to a well-designed marketing strategy.

1. The Evangelists: they love you, period. ...