How a Target Customer Profile Can Improve The Way Your Business Works
11 Oct 2020 |
No business these days can be truly successful unless it can make its customers happy. And to make your customers happy, you need to know them in and out.
What do your customers do?
What are they struggling with?
Why do they need your services?
When you start answering these questions, you start to understand who your ideal customer actually is.
Always remember that not everyone who signs up to your email list is actually interested in buying from you.
That’s why you need to create a target customer profile.
Some people may just sign up to your email list out of curiosity, while others may be waiting to hear about your latest products so that they can make a purchase.
A target customer profile will allow you to figure out which kind of leads you want to focus on, so that you can serve them better. You cannot please everyone. If you try to do that, you will end up creating low quality products and offering low quality services that are not really the best in the industry.
What is a Target Customer Profile?
So what exactly is meant by target customer profiling?
Collins Dictionary defines a customer profile as “a description or analysis of a typical or ideal customer for one’s business”.
Target customer profiling is therefore a way in which a business figures out who its ideal customer is. This process involves a lot of analytical data, and goes way beyond just finding out what the customer needs.
Customer profiling gives you a clear and vivid description of your target customer and his/ her habits. Businesses create this target customer profile depending on a set of characteristics such as email marketing metrics, page views, purchase history, etc.
The Need For a Target Customer Profile
There are many benefits of creating a target customer profile for your business.
This will help you identify who you are serving, understand their pain points, analyse their habits, their needs, and their capabilities.
Types of Target Customer Profiles
It is not necessary that you have only one type of customer profile.
You can create different customer profiles based on their geographic location, their age or gender, their buying habits, or even their social status.
Having clear profiles of every single type of customer you have will give you a clear picture of how you can serve each one more personally.
You can then segment these customers into different lists based on their common interests or behaviour. You then have a deeper understanding of your subscriber base and will know clearly what motivates them to do business with you.
Customer Base Segmentation - How it Can Help Your Business
When you start to study your customer base carefully, you will be able to notice certain similar traits or characteristics among some of them. You can group these customers based on these traits or characteristics. This is called customer based segmentation or customer list segmentation.
The reason why customer segmentation is so important is because it helps you to customise your approach while marketing to each segment.
Gone are those days where you could blast out an email to your whole list and hope that it would bring in some sales. People now want you to serve them personally and be relevant to them.
You need to understand where each of your leads are coming from, what journey they are on, and what they need from you to get further in that journey.
You will be able to know all these things only if you create segmented profiles on your customers.
Also, when you segment their profiles, you will be able to keep track of their buying behaviour and this will give you a clear idea of who your most profitable section of customers are. You can then channelise your efforts to this segment and maximise your profits.
You will be able to allocate a bigger marketing budget for this segment and greatly increase your return on investment (ROI).
4 Steps To Finding Your Target Customer Profile
As we have been discussing in this article, a target customer profile will help you to identify your most profitable type of customer from your list of leads. It will also allow you to serve them better while increasing your revenue.
In case you are struggling with finding your ideal customer profile, you can go through the following steps:
Step 1: Defining Your Target Customer Profile
Figure out who your target customer is by analysing who has been already purchasing your company’s products or services.
When you go through that list, you will be able to narrow down on the specifics such as the gender, age, nationality, educational level, and social status of your target customer.
Step 2: Understanding Your Target Customers Behaviour
There may be some consistencies in your target customer’s behavior that will tell you what kind of products he or she is most interested in.
Study these buying habits so that you can predict your target customer’s needs in the future when you decide to create or upgrade your own product or service.
Step 3: Use The Power of Social Media
Social media reveals a lot about your target customers. Once you have a rough idea of who your target customer is, look for the social media platforms they are likely to spend more time on.
See what kind of posts are being shared on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social media sites and what things your target customers are interested in. Use these insights to target your products and services at them and help them with their needs.
Social media can be a powerful advertising and marketing tool.
Step 4: Create Your Marketing Campaigns Based on Your Target Customer Profile
Once you have a clear picture of who your target customer is, where he or she hangs out on social media, what his or her interests are, and what he or she is struggling with, you can now create powerful marketing campaigns for your products and services.
Customer profiling is a great way to learn more about each of your customers and improve your products and services. It will help you keep up with the latest trends in customer behaviour so that you can always be a step ahead of your competitors!
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If you are seriously interested in building a better client journey we are happy to jump on a brainstorm call with you and show you some live examples as well.