“Once upon a time, there was a little girl who always wore a red riding hood. . . .”
It’s a familiar story, and it’s been told a million ways. If you’ve got a group of writer friends, you could make a parlor game of it:
Tell it as a board book for a 3-year-old.
Now tell it as a spy thriller.
Now tell it as a historical romance.
Tell it as a deep-space science fiction.
You get the picture. Same story plus different audience equals different experience.
You probably already know about the importance of crafting your marketing materials to your novel’s target audience, but what I’m advocating here is that if you want to communicate your message — your story, theme, world — you need to start talking to your audience at “Once upon a time” and continue through “happily ever after.”
Which comes first, the target audience or the message? That’s a chicken-or-egg conundrum that I won’t attempt to answer for you. The important thing is to keep your audience in mind as you write and to understand that if your target audience changes — and it might — it means a root-level revision.
Here are some places where your target audience will influence your writing.
1. Genre
Most genres carry a target audience with them like a parade float. Children’s books? Kids and the adults who read to them. Literary fiction? College-educated, liberal arts degrees, mostly women. Romance? I don’t even need to tell you. Science fiction? This realm that was formerly a masculine domain has divided into more subgenres than I can count, but it’s also divided into “soft” SF and “hard” SF. Guess which has more women readers.
If you’re a reader, you know a lot about your genre’s readership just from what you’ve absorbed without thinking. It doesn’t mean that only women read romance or only men read hard science fiction. Nor does it mean that the same women read every subgenre of romance. What it does mean is that there’s an ambiance that readers expect when they enter that world. As a novelist, you violate that expectation at your own peril.
You like cross-genre? Me, too. The trick to cross-genre is to cross the genre but not the audience. You can blend hard SF and hardboiled detective or a cozy mystery and romance. But put a hard-boiled detective in a soft romance, and it had better be funny, because neither the hard-boiled nor soft romance fans will relate to it.
2. Theme
Chances are that you’ll choose the theme from deep within your own experience and worldview. If it’s not negotiable, that’s a credit to you. Still, you’ll be wise to recognize that a theme of “Life sucks and then you die” is going to resonate with one group of people and “Love conquers all” with another. Again, you cross your audience at your peril.
3. Knowledge of Milieu
If you’re writing in an arena with a specialized vocabulary — medicine, law, ancient Rome, the space program, a fantasy world — you can capture the flavor of the place with well-placed jargon. Part of the appeal for readers is what they can learn about the milieu you’re writing about, so everything you can do to convey a sense of what it’s really like is a plus. But remember that if your readers want to know about the milieu, it’s because they don’t already. Bolster the jargon by illustrating it with action — not infodumps — and make your reader feel like he or she has been there.
Why is Customer Service Important? Ways Customer Satisfaction Correlates with Business Results
When building a successful business, everything screams for attention. Within that flood, why prioritize customer service?
In short, happy customers lead to more money, growth, and sustainability.
But, you already knew that, didn’t you?
Yes, service matters. So does product, tech, design, distribution, marketing, sales, manufacturing… and the myriad of other resources in your company.
I don’t need to convince you why customer service is important. I just need to make sure you prioritize it.
More to the point, I need to help you help your company prioritize it.
Let’s dive into the 11 reasons why customer service is important and how to correlate it with business results…
1. Revenue increases with good customer service.
Revenue dictates every business decision. Companies measure success or failure based on money in minus money out. Profitability is king, regardless of whether it happens on day one or day 1001.
The number one reason why customer service is important in a business is because it correlates to revenue: 84% of organizations working to improve customer service report an increase in revenue.
The keyword in that chart is “working.”
Simply prioritizing good customer service in an organization increases revenue.
While it’s harder to show the one-to-one correlation between customer service and revenue, customer experience analytics provide the framework. Pick a few customer-related metrics to measure, and track revenue in parallel, to see the connection.
2. Happy customers build a better reputation.
Positive reputation leads to higher growth. Reputation goes a long way in a business. It attracts customers, investors, partnerships, and employees. When seeking to improve reputation, start with excellent customer service.
After a positive customer experience, 69% would recommend the company to others. This is the cost a salesforce certification.
For consumers overwhelmed with options, a recommendation from a friend often tips the scales.
The best way to sustainably grow a company is through word-of-mouth.
Viral social media campaigns and paid ads have their place, but nothing beats the oldest trick in the book. Great customer service leads to happy customers who talk about your product or service with future customers.
3. Retention correlates to customer satisfaction.
Customer retention carves the clearest path to business success. Keeping current customers happy results in more stable revenue and more accurate predictions. When you master not just attracting customers, but retaining them, it sets a solid foundation for your entire organization.
And, why is customer service important to retention? 75% of people would return to a company with excellent service.
The majority of consumers sight good customer service as a reason for sticking with a company. Beyond product satisfaction or value, customer satisfaction reigns supreme in today’s landscape.
Your unique product or service may reel them in, but customer service keeps them.
4. Churn decreases with more customer care.
Churn measures the amount of customers who leave a business after purchasing. It provides a fairly cut-and-dry measurement of satisfaction. Customers churn when they’re unhappy.
When it comes to churn, the importance of customer service is clear: 89% of consumers begin doing business with a competitor following a poor customer experience.
Products have issues. Services have flaws.
But if you can provide a seamless customer service experience, people will be forgiving.
Rather than push them right into the enemy’s arms, focus on excellent customer service to prevent customers from churning.
5. CLTV improves with better customer service.
CLTV (customer lifetime value) reveals the amount of money a customer potentially brings to a company over the course of their engagement. CLTV correlates directly with revenue.
How does it relate to customer service, though?
(For one, it’s got “customer” in the name. And anything involving the customer, involves the customer service team.)
These data points reveal a more specific breakdown: Highly engaged customers buy 90% more frequently, spend 60% more per transaction, and have 3 times the annual value compared to other customers.
15 Responses
Thanks, Ann Marie!
Thanks for sharing. Great advice! There is “an ambiance that readers expect when they enter that world. As a novelist, you violate that expectation at your own peril.” You are absolutely correct.
Thanks, Paula. Actually, I’d love to see the SF version of Red Riding Hood. Maybe somebody will really write it.
Great advice! Thanks so much for sharing. I just love the little red riding hood example. That really clarifies target marketing. 😀
Thanks, Snarky. I’m glad you found it helpful.
I’ve been wondering about this topic quite a bit. Well-timed and informative article. Thank you for this!
@Mack – great minds and all… already started it. Soon as the taxes are in this week, I’m all over it. It’l’l be a multi-part series, and you’re absolutely right, the book (and film) is a clinic on all six core competencies. L.
Hey Larry–unrelated to this post: how about an analysis of the Hunger Games? There seem to be some strong core principles at play in that!
That’s good advice, Jan. The ones I’ve known have done exactly that and it has paid off for them.
Thanks, Lorii. I hope the process saves you a lot of work
You’re right, Nann. Different audiences is a good reason to use a pseudonym. The down side of it is that the writer is dividing his or her marketing efforts, so a wise course would be to get established with one audience before branching out.
Good points, Jan. Because of this “target your audience” process, some writers who write in several genres have chosen to use different pseudonyms. They sometimes have the change listed on their covers in wording such as “Jane Doe writing as” in small print right above the larger print: “Mary Smith.” That way, for example, historical romance writers can write SF without disappointing either group of readers, while at the same time, readers might give the other genre a try because they like the author’s writing. But no one gets jarred unintentionally, and both markets can be targetted.
Thanks for sharing this great post. Have gain a lot of information that I can use.
Thanks, Larry!