Seth Godin recently wrote about customer marketing on his blog, Deeper or Wider. He considered two strategies you can use to grow your customer base. One customer marketing strategy is to broaden your selection to draw more prospects to the all-you-can-eat buffet, go wider. Or you can add more variety to what you already have, the go deeper customer marketing strategy. While Seth is a highly respected marketing writer and thinker, I have to wonder if growing your base is the best marketing strategy for immediate and sustainable growth.
Both customer marketing strategies will succeed, they will grow your base, but be careful. The path you choose should depend on who your best customers are and what they want. Going wider to gain new customers, if they’re low-value, doesn’t really help you. Going deeper in an area that the majority like, when they are light to moderate value customers, also doesn’t make sense.
If your best customers, the folks who come back to the buffet two or three times a week, want more of a particular product area, more bacon for example, then going deeper in this area makes sense. But, if they are there because you are convenient and would really prefer more natural options then you should extend your selection, you should go wider and offer more natural choices, even if this isn’t what the majority wants.
Both customer marketing strategies might result in weight loss, some light and moderate customers will stop coming to your buffet, but the value you gain from the increased patronage from heavy users will more than compensate.
Expanding your customer base always sounds like a sensible customer marketing strategy but it can lead to disappointment because you are most likely to attract light and moderate users. Leading brands and companies always have a disproportionate share of heavy category users. Now go eat.
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