Identifying your ideal customer creates the foundations for all the other marketing you may do. Having looked at the impact finding ideal customer can have on your business and identified different sources to find them, in the third in the series of ‘Finding Your Ideal Customer’ we’re going to look at different variables to describe and break down your audience
However, before we do this, let’s look at why this is useful:
Firstly it brings your customers to life. By using different variables, you can describe your audience - what do they look like, what do they like doing, what winds them up?
Secondly, by describing your audience you can paint a picture for everyone else. From the customer service team on the phone to your graphic designer, you can be sure they will understand your ideal customer much better when you use specific ways to describe them.
Finally, if you know more about these customer from what age they are to where they they buy, you can make more informed choices about your products and the marketing of them.
So let’s take a look at the common sets of variables used to describe customer groups :
Demographics
This is the most common group of variables. These are the external characteristics of an individual, for example, their age, gender, income, location.
A sub part of this is geo-demographics, looking at where you live and works on the basis that ‘birds of a feather flock together’.
Taking this a step further you can categorise the population using socio-economic factors and lifestyle together with demographics to create groups of customers such as Suburban Style, City Prosperity and Babies and Bliss. Typical variables include the type of property they live in, whether they own or rent and how many children they have.
Firmographics
If you are selling to another business, you’ll also need to be able to describe the business as well as the individuals within it. Typical variables include industry classification, number of employees, structure of a business (e.g. Ltd Company) and profitability.
Pyschograhics
These are concerned with the beliefs and attitudes of the individual. For example, someone looking at skin cream may not like using products tested on animals. Similarly, a junior decision maker may only want to work with businesses who can demonstrate the impact on professional development. It’s often hard to identify these people without doing some survey work, but the depth of understanding you gain from knowing this makes these variables really useful.
Behaviours
These variables are all about preferences, usage and satisfaction. Where do they prefer to purchase, how much research do they do beforehand, how many times do they tend to buy, how satisfied are they with their current supplier? This data will not only help you to identify who you do want to target, but just as importantly who you don’t
By considering each of these four groups, we can build up the profile of our ideal customer base and get a better understanding of them. In the next article in this series we will look at how to pull all of this information together and create the profile for your customers.
If you’d like help finding and engaging with your ideal customer, please get in touch using our contact form or email me.