Your Customers Ain’t Loyal

Before launching a marketing campaign, every advertiser’s primary request is to define their target audience. In defining this group, people often believe in the existence of a special audience unique to their brand, assuming this group shops exclusively from them. They dislike generalizations and seek a very specific audience, continuing to cater exclusively to this narrow group of loyal buyers.

However, the truth is that no customer is truly loyal. As consumers, we all purchase several brands within the same category at the same time. We buy different brands of shampoo, snacks, and clothes simultaneously. For instance, I can wear Zara and Mango at the same time, or use both Elidor and Gliss shampoos. There's nothing motivating or necessitating absolute loyalty to just one brand. Therefore, none of us are loyal to a single brand. In fact, we don’t occupy as significant a place in people's minds as we think, nor do we carry much meaning.

We might be more loyal to our cell phone operators or insurance agents we've dealt with for years, but in areas where we consume frequently and heavily, we invariably shop from several competing brands at the same time. Therefore, brands that continue communicating only to what they believe is a loyal audience can't attract new customers and, consequently, fail to grow because their audience continuously cheats on them.

This is precisely why we need to stop feeling like we’re unique in our advertising efforts. Even if we see ourselves as higher quality, superior, more natural, more beautiful, or more correct than our competitors, the reality is that we share our customers with our competitors- we are not better than them.

“Your customers are the customers of other brands who occasionally buy you.”

Thus, the first step before starting a marketing campaign should not be to determine 'our unique target audience,' but rather to understand how to make the shoppers within this category choose us. Our audience is already known; it's not narrowly defined, and we shouldn't try to fit them into a mold when addressing them. Once we offer a product, the audience naturally forms. If my category is large enough, I don't need to persuade people to use my product; there are already people buying these products. My job is merely to consider how to occasionally be their brand of choice, as an image.

For people to choose your brand in that category, they need to be frequent consumers of it. (Unless you're already the leader, of course.) Therefore, those who are familiar with your category and have a good knowledge of it are more likely to choose your brand. What you sell and the specifics don't concern them as much as the image you project in their minds and hearts as a “brand”.

Moving forward, remember before campaigns that you share your customer pool with competitors and that you are not special. You're looking for people who not only shop from you regularly but also those who visit occasionally. That's what you need to grow.

To secure a place in their minds and become one of the brands they purchase, aim for intensive communication and make it attention-grabbing. Don't aim for perfection.

Your customers may be cheating on you, but no worries, because your competitors’ customers are cheating on them with you.