Following on from my previous article ‘Client/Customer Profiling Part 1 – The Boston Matrix’ this article will specifically address the importance of knowing exactly who your customers are so that you can be more effective in targeting them with your marketing.
Return on investment from any marketing campaign is key to building awareness of your brand and more importantly, generating leads and sales.
The first and most important step you need to undertake before doing any marketing or promotional campaign is to understand who your ideal customers or clients are and, why they should buy from you.
In addition, being able to overcome their objections and their pain points with your products or services before you even see or speak to them, will also make your conversion from prospect to client much easier.
So, where do you start?
Hopefully, you will already have some knowledge of the types of people or businesses that are best suited to your offers, but the more niche you can be the better.
I really want you to think about homing in on those ‘sweet spots’ rather than trying to be all things to all people, because as an SME business that strategy won’t work. You will inevitably end up spending more money and wasting more time trying to attract the right people by using a generic message.
Let’s Begin with Demographics
To start building a picture of your ideal customer or client avatar, you should use demographics to analyse their characteristics with information, such as age, race, gender, income/turnover, location etc. This will help you identify who are most likely to buy their products or services.
The demographics will differ if you are selling B2C or B2B:
Avatar (Individual Demographics):
Age
Location
Occupation
Race/Nationality
Household Status (owner/renting)
Income
Education – Higher/University
Marital Status – Single, Married, Divorced
Religion
Number of Children
Avatar (Business Demographics)
Size of Business
Age of Business
Number of Employees
Turnover
Location/s
Number of Directors
Industry Type
Obviously, these lists are not exhaustive, so focus on using the demographics that are relevant for your business. The more information you can gather, the better your targeting efforts will be.
Next, look at the Psychographics:
Whilst demographics are great for understanding the general characteristics of your avatars, including psychographics in your analysis will help you to target their emotional characteristics.
This really helps you to dig that bit deeper into the profile of your ideal customer or client avatar.
Not only will it help you to focus on how to overcome their pain points and objections as mentioned before, but it will also help you to identify the types of clients you want to work with by their values and behaviours.
So, you will want to include:
Interests/Hobbies – fashion, beauty, black culture, health and fitness, wellbeing, natural remedies
Their Values
Their Behaviours
The Impact Your Service Wilk Have on Them (Business and Personal)
Their Pain Points
Their Most Common Objections (cost, time, trust etc)
Their Motivations to Take Action (Efficiency, ease of use, time, cost savings etc)
How do you find this information?
For an established business, when you undertake the profiling matrix as identified in part 1 of this article, you will have a clearer understanding which of your existing clients or customers are ranked B, B+ and A. These are the ones who you should base your avatar on because they are profitable, they pay on time and, more importantly, they are easy to work with.
If you’re a new business or entering a new market, there are a few different options you can take such as:
Online research (Google, Social Media, YouTube)
Commission a survey
Talk to data monitoring companies
Look at your competitor’s online profiles and see who they are targeting or who’s responding to their content
Look at your Google and Social Media Analytics
With all of this information in hand, targeting your clients with promotions that speak directly to them will become a lot easier.
Acquiring New Business with Target Marketing
Marketing has become a lot more sophisticated over the years and it will continue to. The buying habits and purchasing decisions of your ideal customers and clients is a very diverse and sometimes complex landscape to navigate if you don't know what to look for.
Once you know who you’re targeting, then you can tailor your sales and marketing strategies to your avatar. This is when you ‘connect’ with the customer or potential customer on a completely different level and when they can say or think ‘this is for ME’ your sales and profits will multiply!
Using the strategies and tactics outlined in this guide, will definitely help you to make the process a lot simpler.
They will also help you to understand and target your market at a level that many of your SME competitors are unlikely to be using. This is a great opportunity to increase market share and stay ahead of them.
For further support with your customer profiling and target market strategy, book a free brand strategy callwith me to find out how I can help you build and maintain your ideal target market.