Step Two - Customers

Defining who your customers will be and creating your customer service policy are two crucial steps.

Knowing who your target customer is will help you to know how to plan your marketing strategies.  For instance, is your ideal customer:

- someone who hosts a lot of parties and events, so they will return frequently to purchase more products;
- are they a mom who is family oriented and likes to do crafts and scrapbooking;
- a corporate executive, who has various clients he likes to gift for their birthdays, anniversaries, or when they come into town;
- other small business owners, who are looking for creative ideas to advertise their own business; or
- wedding planners, looking for new and fresh ideas to offer their clients for decorations or favours.

You can probably think of some ideal clients yourself, who you can target specifically for your products.  Remember, it is much harder to keep quality and service high for hundreds of products than it is to be able to take the time and care offer a few that are the best in the business.  It also makes sense and is more profitable to be the expert and the "go to" person for specific, quality products.

Once you have your ideal, target customers in mind and the products you want to offer then, you now can work on your strategies on how to reach them.  Narrowing down your target customer also allows you to focus your marketing on specific areas and, therefore, keeps your marketing portion of your budget from getting out of control.

Completing a customer service policy will help your customer understand timelines for delivery, alterations, returning emails or phone calls, customer satisfaction, as well as returns and complaints.  It will also be a great assistance for you when you have numerous inquiries or a difficult customer, as you can refer and quote what you already have in place.  Your policy can actually ease your stress, because a well-thought-out customer service policy can make decisions for you that could be difficult or emotionally charged when you are in the middle of dealing with a problem.

I'm working on my ideal customer and marketing strategies right now.  How about you?  If you don't already have them in place, I hope these tips can help you get started.  If you do, great!  Maybe there's something here that can help you tweak them a little or it might just confirm that you're on the right track :)