in this issue Points of Light On a Map-Your Actual Customers The Concentration of Your Customers in Television Markets How Will Several Thousand Lead To Millions?

Producing 5000 sales or customer addresses and zipcode would provide a database of people that can be studied and surveyed in order to predetermine a host of factors about your customers-that will lead to a working knowledge of your entire customer base. This working knowledge is who your customers are, what are their buying habits, and where are they located. Remember-99.99% of the people who dive into direct marketing on television do not do this. They just use their "gut instinct" or rely on others (who also rely on their "gut instinct") that COPY other ads/offers/useful points of sale, and exclude real working knowledge about YOUR customers.

Points of Light On a Map-Your Actual Customers

The first map that we look at is called a "Customer Distribution" Exhibit Map. This map shows actual longitudinal and latitudinal locations of your customers throughout the United States. Each dot on the map represent 5 US Households (Please open the Customer Distribution Exhibit Map at the bottom of this section in order to view the map). In this particular study the client has a list of 20,000 customer addresses and zipcodes. Since there are that many records available we are studying the entire list, but 5000 is more than sufficient to arrive at the same knowledge base.

This map shows a strong distribution of customers throughout the United States, especially the Northeast, CA, and the Upper Midwest. This particular study represents customers who responded to a direct response television commercial that was aired over a period of time on National Cables. The media reach was nationwide, however the customers (who responded the most) were concentrated in certain areas. This is the first step in getting a visual picture of your actual customers and how they are distributed over the United States.

Customer Distribution" Exhibit" Map

	The Concentration of Your Customers in Television Markets
The next step is to identify which markets your customers are most concentrated in. Here we are moving from points on a map to concentrations of populations or television markets throughout the US. There are 212 DMA's or "Designated Markets Areas" that comprise the US television markets. The map (Please refer to the Customer Distribution by DMA Map at the bottom of this section) shows all of the boundaries of these DMA's and various shades of grey. Unfortunately we can not show the various colors, however each color represents a certain number of YOUR ACTUAL customers that reside in a particular DMA. For instance the darkest color which happens to be red represents a concentration of 584 to 1160 of ACTUAL customer residences. This particular color winds up in fourteen DMA's, all of which are labeled on the map: Seattle/San Francisco/Reno/etc.....This particular color represents the most or highest concentration of your customers, and from this level the range of customer concentration is less plus each range has a particular color associated with it. Customer Distribution by DMA Map »

	How Will Several Thousand Lead To Millions?
From a media point of view, we now know which television markets harbor the greatest to least number of our customers, however how will a sampling of a few thousand people lead us to the "pot of GOLD at the end of the rainbow?" You need to reach millions of customers! Next issue we will begin to show how we can take this preliminary information and begin to build a POTENTIAL customer profile and location-that number in the millions (depending on the size and scope of the market you are pursuing). Please review our last newsletter which talks about ACORNS. These are the descriptions which very accurately express the types of people who are your most dominant customers. This will lead us to a full disclosure of your customer base and a clear roadmap of what to do not only for media but also commercial production as well. Last Week's Issue: Definition of ACORNS »

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