Action-Fraction

Why you should profile your customers

11 April 2014 | By Catherine Wheatcroft

 

Whilst most business owners are more than happy to sell their products or services to anyone that cares to pay for them, this can be limiting for future business success!

 

What we really should be doing is developing a detailed understanding of our customers and building up a profile of what our future customers look like.

Understanding your customers is the secret to successful selling and marketing. And your existing customers are valuable sources of information that will help you to understand how to reach future customers and sales. The more you know about your customers, the more you know about your prospects and next customers. And the more you know about your next customers, the more targeted you can be in your promotional activities.

 

customer profiles

 

 

This knowledge of exactly who your next customers are and their ‘profile’ gives you the power to then fine tune your advertising efforts so that you are right in front of them when they need to buy. Profiling existing customers makes it a lot easier to find new ones of a similar profile. You can then look for similar prospects and sell to them in a similar way.

 

How to profile your customers
The process of profiling your customers and understanding them in detail is relatively easy. If you have a computerised customer database, export your customer records into a spreadsheet. You then need to work through each customer and establish his or her characteristics.

 

You are not going to know everything, but you might be able to fill in any gaps in information from their own websites or Linked In profiles. For each customer, answer the following questions:

1. Are they male or female?
2. How old are they?
3. Single? Married?
4. Children? (How old?) No children?
5. What do they do for a living?
6. What's their income level?
7. Did they go to college?
8. Where do they live?
9. What language do they speak?
10. What are their hobbies?
11. What magazines/newspapers/trade journals do they read?
12. What TV programmes/films might they watch?
13. What websites do they spend time on?
14. Do they shop online?
15. Do they go to any conferences or events during the year? If so, what ones?
16. Who are the leaders and/or experts in their industry?
17. Who are the primary competitors in their industry?
18. List as many people, companies, groups or organisations that are similar to your customer as possible.

 

I hope that you are both intrigued and inspired to use this method to better identify, profile and target your ideal customer better than ever before. If you’re feeling confused about which marketing strategy or tactic to take, you can be sure that the core of your confusion comes from not having a tight enough customer profile.


So put aside some time to explore who your next ideal customers are, what they look like and what habits they have. It will focus your offering, save you money on marketing activities that are not yielding results and ensure you are selling to the people that need to buy from you.


How did you get on with profiling your ideal customers? If you are struggling or need some help, call me now to arrange a free half hour consultation on 07895 389919.