This Issue: Know Your Customer, Create Your Success

Recently, I took Britney Spears to task for getting a little too wild after she announced that she and her husband are separating. She's been constantly partying every night and she was photographed - more often than not - without underwear.

Several celebrities have followed my lead and have chastised Britney for her behavior.

Singer Courtney Love - of all people - suggested that Britney should stay at home more to look after her children. Former supermodel Janice Dickinson suggested that Britney should --buckle down and become a parent.-- Bette Midler even went so far as to call her names that I don't even want to repeat.

On a more serious note, it was reported that the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services plans to investigate Britney about concerns over the welfare of her two children.

With all this attention, Britney admitted on her website that maybe she has taken the partying a little too far. She even said that she did go out and buy some new underwear.

I think Britney's going to be OK and I think she's going to be a great mother. She wants some free time but now, Britney, it's time to settle down and get back to work. It's time to get back to being a mother and being a star.

Donald J. Trump, chairman of Trump University, shares his advice in many Trump University courses, including The Entrepreneurship Mastery Program.

I'd like to ask you a very basic question today:

When you become an entrepreneur, will you know who your customers are?

That's an interesting question, because there are so many ways to answer it. As an experiment, I asked our Executive Editor Barry Lenson to call three entrepreneurs and ask them that question. Here is what they told Barry:

Entrepreneur #1 answered, --Well, I know who my customers are, but I have never actually spoken to any of them.--

Entrepreneur #2 said, --I have spent a lot of money on focus groups that told me what my customers like, and don't like, about my products.--

Entrepreneur #3 replied, --My customers are mostly men between the ages of 22 and 25 with incomes between $50,000 and $75,000.--

Those are all valid answers. But they are pretty different. Each of them says something different about what it means to know your customers.

But since today is the day after the Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I'd like to position the question a bit differently:

How much do you know about the heritage, religious and racial backgrounds of your customers?

Even today, many business owners know nearly everything about their customers - except about their heritage, religion, ethnicity or race.

Why do you need this extra level of information about the people who buy your products or services? Let me mention just a few reasons that we cover in our course The Marketing Mastery Program.

Having this information:

• Allows you to market to your customers using highly targeted magazines, radio stations, television networks, Websites and other media. As a result, you get a much higher return on investment for your advertising dollars than you can get from --scattergun-- advertising that targets everyone.
• Lets you cultivate customers in highly affluent customer groups. African-Americans, Asian-Americans, Latino-Americans, South Asian (Pacific Rim) Americans (and gay and lesbian Americans too, for that matter) are gaining economic clout at an accelerating rate. They are starting businesses, investing, buying homes, graduating from college and becoming wealthy at rates that outpace --traditional-- white Americans.
• Brings you greater customer loyalty and repeat business. Many marketing studies report that customer loyalty is disproportionately high in Afro-American, Asian-Americans and Hispanic-American communities. In other words, once you have won customers in these groups, they will remain loyal to you in the long run.

So the bottom line is, you have to dig deeper and really know your customers. To win a level of loyalty that will outpace your competitors, don't leave racial, ethnic or heritage considerations out of your marketing plan.

To learn more about marketing strategically and profitably, enroll in Trump University's Marketing Mastery Program. Classes are forming now.

In my blog post this morning, I would like to confront a rampant misconception about marketing.

It is that marketing is something that a company does - just another activity like HR, accounting, training or product development.

I would like to blow that misconception to bits. Because marketing is not something your company does.

Marketing is your company

Nor is your company bricks and mortar, or even a Web page. Which leads me to another statement.

Your company is your customer

If you don't orient everything you do around your customer, you don't have a business. If you doubt what I am saying, let's consider the life cycle of a typical new small company. It usually goes something like this:

A would-be entrepreneur gets an idea for a product or a service business. He or she writes a business plan. Next comes funding, which the entrepreneur uses to pay for an office, equipment, a Website and employees. Then it is time to think about customers.

And because the customer was left out of the process until the very end of the process, the enterprise fails. In some cases, the entrepreneur can save the enterprise by retrofitting the earlier steps - product development and so on - with the customer in mind. But that costs lots of extra time, effort and money.

The solution is to put your customers at the epicenter of your planning from day one. They cannot become an afterthought. If you doubt the cost of ignoring them for too long, remember the many historical examples of companies that squandered $millions to develop failed products. From New Coke to the IBM PC Jr. to the Edsel, the woods are littered with the shells of failed products that nobody wanted to buy.

As we explore inThe Marketing Mastery Program, one of my courses at Trump University, the success of your new enterprise requires you to focus on two marketing basics from the moment a promising entrepreneurial idea enters your mind:

Targeting - Know exactly who your customers will be. Not sort of, but exactly. Understand their needs. Then decide how you can satisfy those needs more effectively than your competitors can.

Positioning - Identify one, two or perhaps three benefits that your specific customers want, and that you can provide at a level superior to your competitors. If you are opening a health club and want to target young mothers, for example, be the only club in your area that provides childcare. Positioning requires you to know who your target customer is, and what your competition is offering.

In summary . . .

Your marketing, your customer and your company are one and the same. If you keep that in mind from day one of your new business development, entrepreneurial accomplishment - and supreme success - can be yours.

Donald Sexton, PhD, is Trump University's professor of marketing. He is also Professor of Business at Columbia University and President of The Arrow Group,a leading marketing consulting group. Dr. Sexton teaches The Marketing Mastery Program at Trump University.