Marketing: Who are Your ACTUAL customers?

Grit & Growth

How do you market your product? And who are you marketing to? Those two questions go hand in hand as Nick Musyoka of Sonar Imaging Center learned. Hear how he targeted his marketing messages and increased revenues by 500% in just six years. And, gain insights from Jonathan Levav, professor of marketing at Stanford Graduate School of Business, on how customer segmentation can help you find and market more effectively to your customers.

Standing out is never easy, especially when the product you and your competitors provide is virtually the same. That was the situation for Nick Musyoka when he returned to Kenya to lead marketing for Sonar Imaging Center, a chain of radiology clinics in Kenya.

According to Professor Levav, understanding who your customer is is harder than it seems. “For starters, you need to distinguish between the user and the decision-making unit” he explains. Using the toy company model as an example, the child is the ultimate user, but the parent is the decision-making unit. Who you prioritize and how you market to each matters.

That distinction between user and decision-making unit is essential to Sonar Imaging. Musyoka’s research revealed that patients were the users and doctors were the decision-making units, so the company’s marketing needed to focus on a group that would probably never set foot inside a clinic.

Levav says the next step after identifying each of your customers, is figuring out how to solve their unique problems. “You want the user to understand that the solution you have is the best thing since sliced bread and it’s going to solve their problem. That’s positioning,” he explains. And finding your differentiation is key to that process.

So, Musyoka asked himself “What is the key thing that we can talk about to differentiate ourselves?” Quality was too hard to prove. Unquestionable customer service was the answer for all of his customer segments. Even though his marketing campaigns have been incredibly successful, Sonar continues to evolve its customer segmentation and marketing. Levav couldn’t agree more. “You don't just go out there in the world, assess the needs, walk away and just go hibernate and do your product, and then hope to sell it,” he says. “This is something that has to be done on a regular basis because people's tastes change. Market realities change, competition changes, culture changes, macroeconomic conditions change, microeconomic conditions change.”

Listen to Musyoka’s first-hand marketing experiences and Levav’s insights on the importance of customer segmentation and positioning for every company that wants to stand out from the crowd.

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