Having Two Different Customers

Nate and I discussed towards the end of last week's class, our problem of having two different customers for our social venture. We realized that one customer would be the students that participate in the program. These customers would be the ones experiencing a potential improvement in their life (and hopefully future) by becoming part of the program and learning the different skills communicated through our program. Our second customer would be those people who purchased the luxury boats built by the students in the program. The money put forth by these customers would cover the costs incurred by our social venture and enable it to continue. Both customers are extremely important for making our social venture successful and thus when thinking about this week's articles on marketing strategies and creating customer evangelists, I realized that we would have target each customer base in a separate yet equally important way.

The concept of creating a customer evangelist will be crucial to the success of our venture. We need both the students and the boat buyers to spread the word about our program. Ideally by showing the city of Miami the good our program is doing for the students in the area we would create a buzz about our venture increasing the number of students who apply. Students will love the program, the skills they develop, and the opportunities they receive. They will communicate this to other students who will then also wish to join the program. As more and more students become involved, the more we can expand our venture, engaging more students and thus possibly more luxury boats. More luxury boats means more boat buying customers who can also spread the word about our program. This circuit would enable our program to sustain itself and potentially expand. However, it is apparent that creating our customer evangelists will be essential to getting our name out there.

Furthermore, our teenage participants will most likely be users of social media. They, like much of the US teenage population, will be members of online communities, use facebook regularly, and have twitter accounts. Our teenage customers may be one of our greatest assets for marketing and exposure. By realizing this early on the social venture process, we can make sure to utilize our customers to expand our program in the most efficient manner possible.

Lastly, when thinking about how to market our boats to potential customers, I believe it is important that we communicate to buyers that our boats are not only luxury but also serve a good cause. As I mentioned before, if you had the opportunity to spend money on a luxury boat built by a regular company or a luxury boat built by students in a program aimed at serving them and teaching applicable skills, which would you choose? By creating a buzz word or phrase (ie Building boats, building futures) that communicates this notion, we could garner more support in the community and increase our customer base in terms of buyers.