the difference: audience, consumers, and customers - Issue #8
Dear you,
I have a couple of questions for you.
For diapers, who do you think the target customer is? Parents or the babies?
What about football? Who is the target customer? You or big brands?
How about TV programmes? WHo is the target customer? Viewers or advertisers?
The correct answers are Parents, Big brands and advertisers.
Why? I’ll tell you.
consumer vs customer
Your consumer is not always your customer! I can see that I may have confused you with this answer so let me break it down!
Let's use diapers for example. Diapers are used by babies and often bought by parents, mostly mothers. The baby is the consumer and the mother (or parent) is the customer.
Let's try the sports and TV station example as well. The people who watch TV or sports are the consumers and the brands who advertise on TV or through the clubs are the customers.
If the person who uses the product is the consumer and the person who pays for the product or needs the product to comfort the consumer, is the customer.
how do you spot the difference?
Remember that the customer is the person who has the capacity or willingness to pay. The customer must always have the capacity or willingness to pay. If the person cannot pay or does not have the capacity to pay. It is possible for your consumer and customer to be the same person. Just do your research. Ask questions, listen and pay attention.
So how do you serve the two groups? It’s simple. Satisfy your consumer then market that satisfaction to your customers. If you have any questions, send me a dm here.
audience vs. customer
In the same vein, not all your target audience are your target customers. I know this sounds weird but it took me a while to realize this.
First,
Have you ever wondered why only 1% to 10% of your followers buy from you, yet they engage with your content, ask you questions and tell people about you but when it is time to buy, a lot of them disappear?
Is it because they don’t need your service? No. Here’s the reason.
It is already an established fact that you must have a target market, when running a business. We also know that your target market cannot be everybody. Remember, the idea of a target audience or customer doesn’t mean everyone else cannot buy from you. It just means they are not the ideal people. For example, if you have an app as a product and one 80 years old woman buys from you, 90% of your other buyers are 18-25 years. It doesn’t mean your target market is 80 years old. She is just an exception. Suppose you stretch your communication effort to accommodate everyone. In that case, you will end up talking to no one because how you’ll speak to a 5-year-old is entirely different from how you’ll speak to a teenage and a working-class lady or an older woman.
This is why when describing a target market, we categorize them based on these two levels:
Demography: Location, age, gender
Psychography: Challenge, behavior, inspiration/motivation, goals, doubts and their reason to believe.
Within your target market, there are two levels, your audience and your customers. Your customers are a subset of your audience.
I will use one of my favorite analogies to help you visualize this:
the oxygen analogy
If you are reading this post right now, you are probably not the customer for oxygen. Actually you are not! Oxygen is free for you. It is not your pain point but tell that to someone:
Who can't breathe on his/her own
who is stuck in the deep blue sea
who is about to go into surgery. who is stuck in a crashing plane
who is stuck in space
Oxygen sellers know that their target market are in life-threatening situations, so the price is high. High risk, high reward, high cost
Oxygen is free, and humans need it but will you pay for it, nope! Because you do not have a problem that needs it. However, people in the hospital who are on life support and cannot breathe by themselves will willingly pay for the oxygen tanks at whatever price is presented to them. If you were going to the moon, you’d pay for oxygen.
your customer must check three boxes:
they must need a solution to the problem you solve
They must be willing and able to pay for it
They must be willing and able to pay for it again.
We are the audience of oxygen but the people who need it, and are willing to pay + have the capacity to pay for it are the customers.
Apple's customers are those who can afford to buy the latest apple product every year or two, those who have more than one apple device, those who not only buy the phone or MacBooks but subscribe for services like Apple Music, iCloud storage and more. Apple's target customers are not those who buy the used Apple products or partition their MacBooks with Windows OS. No! If Apple depended on those people to survive, their business will not be a trillion dollar business. All the Apple founders, CEOs and staff will be hungry!
Apple knows their customers. They crossed $100 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time in the company’s history: it brought in $111.4 billion in total. This could not have come from Africa where, according to Statcounter only 82.9% of people use Android OS and 15.53% use iOS. According to IDC, Transsion brands (Tecno, Itel, and Infinix) continued to dominate Africa's smartphone space in Q2 2021, with 47.4% unit share. Samsung and Xiaomi followed in second and third place, with respective unit shares of 19.3% and 9.1%. The Transsion brands (Tecno and Itel) also dominated the feature phone landscape with a combined share of 76.3%. Nokia placed third with 9.8% share of feature phone shipments in Q2 2021. Look at the statistics below from Capital Counselor:
Apple knows the difference between their audience and their customer. They know that while lots of people around the world follow them on Instagram, 42% of their revenue comes from America. They know that they hold a large market share in the Japanese smartphone market. However, they also know that they need their audience to get to their customer. Apple knows their customers and not all of them subscribe to their newsletters or follow them on Instagram!
This is why you may have an audience (people who have a problem you can solve) of 100 people, but only 2-10 will be customers. This means 90%-98% of your followers/ audience may never buy from you.
This doesn’t mean you are doomed. Instead, it presents an opportunity, an opportunity to use the other 90% as evangelists. While they may never buy from you, they may speak on your behalf to people you have never met and increase your chances of building an amazing customer base.
Be as specific as you can be. Know the difference between both segments and this will help you simplify your communication when interacting with them. It will also help you manage your expectations but most importantly, it will give you the courage to say no.
When you see people who need your service but cannot afford it but they feel the need to guilt trip you by saying; “I can get it cheaper, or it’s too expensive or any form of guilt-ridden comment” you can easily say no, without feeling regret or guilt. Because you recognize that while this person may need your service, you might not be the best to provide that solution for them. You can even be confident enough to recommend them to someone else.
Knowing the difference between your audience, consumer and customer is freeing and enlightening.
To help you through this, I have created a guide. Download audience discovery guide. If you have any questions, or thoughts, please share in the comment section.
I hope this piece makes your journey a little easier, and your path a little clearer.
With love,
Blessing Abeng.