The significance of understanding your customers

Marketing is simply telling your customer about your product or service and having them buy from you.

To do this statement justice you need to UNDERSTAND your customers. Like really understanding them.

Their desires and values. Their challenges and pain. Where they look for information. Objections and excuses for buying they may have. Their role in the purchasing decision.

All of these form their psychographic profile. Which is very personal and could be seen to be individual. However by understanding your customer based on these elements of profiling will allow you to appeal to emotions.

The other form of segmenting your customers is based on demographics – location, age, gender, marital status, family make-up, income, occupation and education. This is the easiest of data to both source and measure.

The more details you can provide in these areas the better profiling you can undertake with your customers -and the more targeted the marketing.

As you develop your profile, and then measure it, you may find new customer profiles within your business. Ones you may never have thought about. You can then create a new profile and possibly a new marketing opportunity.

More importantly by asking the question – what is their role in the buying process – you may discover that you have been promoting to the wrong person all along. You want the decision maker – not the ‘other’ person!

Once you understand who your customer/s are – and you are meeting them where they are to tell them about your product or service – you will have more sales.

Next time you run a campaign, or post on social media, or spend money on advertising, or have publicity – ask yourself will your ideal customer see that piece of promotion?

Before you say ‘it didn’t work’ make sure your promotion ‘speaks’ to your ideal client. The wording, the imagery, the placement.

Put your customer central  to your marketing decisions.

So the more details you can place into your profile, the more you can understand about your customer – the more effective your marketing will be.

Rachel Allan is running a webinar on Customer Profiling, follow this link for more