Anyone who has money to purchase your product can buy it, but that doesn’t mean that everyone is your customer. When we meet with new clients, one of the first things we help them understand is their customer. Owners often think that if they narrow down the focus of their business and develop a customer profile that they’re saying they won’t sell to others. It is not the case.
During our coaching sessions we help small businesses understand and identify their target market. Pinpointing who your customers are is actually very necessary for the implementation of a successful marketing plan. If you don’t know who your target is, you won’t know what language (in marketing we call this ‘copy’) to use to communicate to them. When we say communicate we mean getting your prospective customer (sales lead) to take the action you want them to from your advertising.
If you don’t know who your target is, you won’t know which media channel will be most effective for promoting your products. When you say everyone is your customer and you leave it at that, it makes it almost impossible to effectively push your product. Your customer profile should have demographic, sociographic, and pshycographic components.
“Let us say your customer is a middle-aged married woman, that works or owns her own business, has a college education, lives in a city, owns a smart phone, owns car, and earns on average 6000 GHC/monthly. She wants to look good but she doesn’t have a lot of time to spend on beauty. She is thinking of going natural but doesn’t know whether or not she can manage it. Several of her friends have gone natural too but she is still undecided.”
Let us say for example you own a hair salon. You’ve decided that the above customer profile is who you want to target. When you start thinking about how to promote your business to this customer you know automatically that having an express hair service (hair done in 90 mins or your money back) is going to increase the likelihood of getting this customer. If she owns a car you also know that she must commute to and from work during rush hour, so advertising your salon on the radio starts to make sense as most people listen to the radio while they’re commuting.
You want to make the profile as detailed as possible, as if you were casting a film and looking for the best person to play a role. The better your profile, the better your advertising. When your target hears or sees your advert he/she will feel like this is exactly what they’ve been looking for. It will feel like an instant connection. The
profile will help you understand the wants and needs of your customer. It will help you to figure out how your product will make their life better. The more you know about them, the more accurate your assumptions about their needs and the higher the prospect of building a relationship with them.
So you’re already in business and didn’t figure out who your customer was before and want to do so now? You’re in luck! That you already have existing customers means that you can use their data to create customer profiles (you can have different profiles for the same business). If you collect customer demographic data already then you can just go into your database and look at who your customers have been and start to build a profile from there. If alternatively you don’t keep customer data (well now is a good time to start).
Develop a quick questionnaire with 10 questions to start and you and your employees can ask your customers to fill it out on location or you can sit with them or call them on the phone to get the answer. Use the infographic above to decide what kind of questions should go into your customer survey. Your already existing customers (with whom you have a great relationship) will have no problem giving you the information you need to better understand their needs.
Alternatively if you’re overwhelmed with work already but feel like getting your customer profile done is something you need to do, then you can get help here.
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