Who is your customer? It’s not as obvious as it might seem. In many businesses, the real customer might not be the person your company is thinking about, but it should be. Simply put, regardless of who drives your business, you’re real customer is the entity who decides to pay you for your products and services. Let’s look at some examples:

Are you a Google customer? If you’re like the majority of us and you only use their services such as search, mail, and maps, then not really. Google’s customers are the people who buy AdWords, and search placements. Without you and me, Google might not have much of a business, but without advertisers, they’d have even less.

Are you looking for new opportunities with Monster’s job boards? Monster has to spend some of its resources making sure you find value in their site; but you’re a volunteer product, not the customer. This is true for all sorts of recruitment firms and the source of many a misunderstanding between recruiters and job seekers. ‘This guy doesn’t seem to be working for me…’ is a common complaint, but frankly, you shouldn’t expect them to. The job seeker typically doesn’t pay anything for the privilege of someone finding a job for her. Monster and other recruiters work for the businesses for whom they find candidates. They’re marketing message must reflect this.

During the start-up phase of a company developing a web-based application to optimize how we buy things, the company constantly had to remind itself who the real customers were (stores) and not be distracted by all the positive feedback they got from people who planned on using the application (individual users). Like many businesses today, exactly who your customer is might not be so obvious because you must get a group of people excited about your product and then leverage that interest and enthusiasm with someone who will pay you.

In an earlier article we discussed the importance of letting people know what you can do for them. Of course, it’s impossible to get the right message if you haven’t even identified who your customer is. Hopefully, you’re well ahead of this game, but given a little thought and you might even be surprised.