I’m sure it has been done to death, but Ireland is a very multicultural society these days with people of many nationalities now calling the island home (not for the weather, at least.)
As a retailer we’ve found it to be quite a good challenge to reach out to these people – for example Polish, Chinese, Latvians or Hungarians – who tend to have a very tight-knit community organized in the country, the same way that the Irish did when we were emigrating en-masse to a new land.
On the one hand you can say that one shouldn’t pigeon hole your customers – and we really don’t. On the other hand, you have several groups of people – contained within is as diverse a group of consumers with different expectations and buying habits as found anywhere else – who are generally reached through tighter-knit social communities owing to their relatively recent arrival here.
We’ve had really good fun making contact and dealing with the different communities around the country, and we’ve also learned a thing or two from the resourcefulness and real classic social-networking nature of dealing with migrant communities. It has also been an eye-opener to the world that sits unnoticed on our front porch – For example, if boards.ie is a big Irish community online that is very well known, there are several such communities for various different national groups here.
It could be said to be a very personalized relationship that begins to exist between your customers that transcends the “Reach XX thousand ABC1 consumers” that comes from dropping an advertisement in the Sunday Independent. You have to be more on the ball as a seller to make contacts with the super-networkers, the guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who can get you this or needs that.
A classic example is a guy who buys parts from us twice a week, assembles PC’s for people around him and also passes them along to us for their other needs – we have a really good relationship, shift a lot of tin on his account, and he passes us back customers in return.
We’re all for dealing creatively with entrepreneurial people (from anywhere, Latvia or Louth); finding new and creative ways to connect to our customers; and generally learning and re-learning the lesson that if we go that extra mile for our customers to make life easier, we’ll ultimately win a lot more business from that customer and their friends. It’s all about making 1-to-1 relationships in which you, our customer, knows that you can contact us with any problem or request that we can work on for you.
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This entry was posted on February 10, 2009 at 6:52 pm and is filed under Comment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Connecting With Communities
by komplettieI’m sure it has been done to death, but Ireland is a very multicultural society these days with people of many nationalities now calling the island home (not for the weather, at least.)
As a retailer we’ve found it to be quite a good challenge to reach out to these people – for example Polish, Chinese, Latvians or Hungarians – who tend to have a very tight-knit community organized in the country, the same way that the Irish did when we were emigrating en-masse to a new land.
On the one hand you can say that one shouldn’t pigeon hole your customers – and we really don’t. On the other hand, you have several groups of people – contained within is as diverse a group of consumers with different expectations and buying habits as found anywhere else – who are generally reached through tighter-knit social communities owing to their relatively recent arrival here.
We’ve had really good fun making contact and dealing with the different communities around the country, and we’ve also learned a thing or two from the resourcefulness and real classic social-networking nature of dealing with migrant communities. It has also been an eye-opener to the world that sits unnoticed on our front porch – For example, if boards.ie is a big Irish community online that is very well known, there are several such communities for various different national groups here.
It could be said to be a very personalized relationship that begins to exist between your customers that transcends the “Reach XX thousand ABC1 consumers” that comes from dropping an advertisement in the Sunday Independent. You have to be more on the ball as a seller to make contacts with the super-networkers, the guy who knows a guy who knows a guy who can get you this or needs that.
A classic example is a guy who buys parts from us twice a week, assembles PC’s for people around him and also passes them along to us for their other needs – we have a really good relationship, shift a lot of tin on his account, and he passes us back customers in return.
We’re all for dealing creatively with entrepreneurial people (from anywhere, Latvia or Louth); finding new and creative ways to connect to our customers; and generally learning and re-learning the lesson that if we go that extra mile for our customers to make life easier, we’ll ultimately win a lot more business from that customer and their friends. It’s all about making 1-to-1 relationships in which you, our customer, knows that you can contact us with any problem or request that we can work on for you.
Like this:
This entry was posted on February 10, 2009 at 6:52 pm and is filed under Comment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.