Over the past week, we have been defining the people surrounding your business. We discussed clients, customers, and our most recent post discussed prospects. All of these are within your marketing bulls eye, which you can learn more about here. We have finally reached the outer ring of the bulls eye, the suspects.
Suspects can be a difficult term to try to pair with the field service industry, and if you are like me, you probably never even heard of anyone described as a suspect outside of crime shows. But I decided to listen to Mike Ratchford, marketing expert, when he explained what suspects were and how they related to marketing in the field service industry. He actually made the term work and he made it make sense! You can view Ratchford’s entire discussion of marketing and suspects here, but for this post, we will strictly be discussing what suspects are and how they relate to your marketing tactics.
What are suspects?
Suspects are those that really have no effect on your company, and vice versa. They are people who will most likely never use your services or products, and so they hold no real value to you. Outside of clients, customers, and prospects, they are the rest of the world. It’s nothing personal on either side, you just both have no use for each other. A few examples of suspects would be:
- You are a pool maintenance business; they do not own a pool
- You push snow; they live in Florida
- You are a medical equipment repair company; they don't own medical equipment
Suspects and marketing
As little value that suspects offer your company, they are still important to define and classify. This can save you a lot of time and money if you know exactly who will read your brochures versus who throws them directly in the trash. That being said, suspects should receive very little, if any, of your marketing attention. We suggest you spend most of your focus on those who actually know and use your business, like clients.
So suspects are not the bad guys we all thought they were. They just turn out to be people we know we do not need to market to because there will be no potential revenue from it. It is more important to focus your marketing efforts on those who use your services versus those who do not. We know this sounds a little backwards, but trust us, it works!