The 4 types of customers of marketing

An important idea about marketing is delivering the right relationships to the right customers.

Some customers are worth your time, some others aren't worth the investment you want to make.

As a result it is important to classify your consumers, and to target the most profitable ones.

You can classify customer by using their lifetime values, the consumer equity and their loyalty.

As a result we end up with 4 types of customers.

The first ones are strangers. Your company must not invest into strangers. They don't plan to be loyal to your company, they are showing low potential profitability. As a result, you don't have to do business with these customers.

The second types of customers are butterflies. Butterflies are not loyal but can show some profits over a short period of time. As a result you can enjoy them while they are at your company, but you shouldn't spend any effort into gaining them back once they are away.

True friends are your most profitable and most loyal customers. Their is a strong link between them and your company and you want to create the best relationship over time with them, in order to make them as comfortable as possible. They can become true believers, in that case, they come back often and tell others about their good experience with your company.

Finally, barnacles are highly loyal. But they are not profitable at all. Like barnacles, they lag your ship behind and you have to push them away to go faster. You can either try to make them profitable by creating specific products made for barnacles. If they cannot become profitable, you have to fire them.

As a result, you have to adapt your strategy depended on the customer your talking with. This is an important fact about customer relationship management strategies.