Every one of your customers has individual characteristics that make them who they are. But those customers will often share certain characteristics. Understanding what those common characteristics are will make your marketing more effective. And whether you’re marketing on a shoestring or not, that can only be a good thing.
How can understanding your customer make your marketing more effective?
Because you can:
- show that you understand their challenges and – more importantly – how you can help them to meet them
- know they need what you’re offering – focusing your marketing on the prospects you know will be interested means a better conversion rate than if you focus on prospects that might be interested
- choose the medium that suits them best – if you’re marketing to travelling sales people, local radio might be a good option; if you’re dealing with marketing professional, email might be a better bet.
In short, you’re making your customers more likely to buy from you.
So how do you understand who your customers are?
You draw up customer profiles for five of your best customers. Think about:
Who they are
- Name
- Industry
- Role
- Age
- Gender
- Interests
- Education
- What is important to them
- What are their needs?
- What keeps them awake?
- What stops their company growing?
- What wastes their time?
So for one of our customers you might end up with:
Sally runs her own accounting practice which has grown quickly over the 2 last years. She is in her early 30s has a young family and is a West Brom supporter. She has little time to promote the company and is concerned the website looks outdated but is worried she wouldn´t find time for any clients she did win.
From this we can understand that Sally is a busy person with drive and ambition. Marketing to customers like her will need to reflect that drive but also get straight to the point. Because she´s got so little time we need to demonstrate that as professionals she can trust us to get on with the job while she gets on with hers. We also need to remind her that an out-of-date website reflects badly on a business she´s worked hard to build up so investing now would protect her business – and even offer the capacity to take it to the next level.