Nobody wants to waste money. If you feel like you’re wasting half of your advertising budget but you aren’t sure which half, you’re not alone. John Wanamaker, one of the pioneers of advertising, said the same thing. 

But today, with modern technology that wasn’t available to Mr. Wanamaker, we can change that.

Instead of marketing to a general audience, we can use a technique called Customer Modeling to market to a specific audience – one that is most likely to respond to your offer.

First, we create a comprehensive household profile on each of your existing clients. This isn’t just a few criteria like age, household income, and location. This is a complete profile using nearly 500 data points that uncovers lifestyle habits, preferences, and more. 

Then we compare your existing customers to the average household in your area to identify ideal prospects. These ideal prospects match many of the characteristics of your existing customers that are different from the general population. You can use this information to build customer personas, but the real magic happens in Step 3.

Third, we are able to identify and purchase that target list of prospects who look most like your current customers, and we can prioritize them in deciles from 1 to 10, with 1 being the most like your existing customers. Once that list is purchased, it opens up all kinds of avenues for strategic direct marketing campaigns – print, digital, or a mix of the two, depending on your budget.

Customer Modeling works for B2C organizations. If your business sells to consumers, then Customer Modeling may be a good fit. There are some businesses where Customer Modeling does not work as well, such as pizza or fast-food restaurants. That’s because the target audience for those kinds of businesses is very general – most everyone likes pizza, regardless of age, income, lifestyle, etc. But if you are selling products or services to a specific type of customer, you may benefit from Customer Modeling.