Who are your customers? It sounds like a simple question, yet many business people struggle to answer this question. Some businesses might suggest that everyone is their customer.
Not knowing who your customers are or operating under the impression that everyone is your customer is bad news for your marketing efforts and ultimately your business.
It’s doubtful that any one business can be all things to all people. In fact, in reality only a limited number of people will buy products and services from you. Your mission is to determine, as much as possible, exactly who these people are so you can target your marketing energy and dollars toward them.
There are a couple of ways of ways to accomplish this task.
• Using demographics — information about the basic characteristics of the people who buy your products or services, such as age, income level, gender — you can determine your target audience. If you sell women’s clothing, your primary target market is, of course, women. The style of clothing you sell will pinpoint the audience a bit more. Young women and teens are probably more likely to buy trendy fashions, while women in their 30s, 40s and 50s will generally go for a more sophisticated or professional style. Demographics will provide you with a general profile of your audience, but do you really know them?
• Psychographics — which take into consideration the lifestyles and behaviors of your audience — take it a step further and can help you fill in the gaps around basic demographic information.
All well and good, you say, but how do you get this information?
Some of this information can be obtained simply by observing your customers. You may need to ask to find out other information.
A simple way to glean information is to ask customers to fill out a simple survey. As an incentive, you might hold a drawing and award a gift certificate to the winner or offer everyone who completes the survey a discount coupon for a return visit. You can find free survey templates at www.questionpro.com, www.surveyshare.com and www.surveyconsole.com on the Internet to help you craft a survey.
A picture should begin to emerge of your ideal customer — or who you want your customer to be. You might even be able to write a description of your customer. For example, “My target customer is a middle- to upper-class woman, between 35 and 60, who is physically active.”
How many people in your geographical area fit into that description? A bit of research will be required to learn the answer. You can hire a professional service to obtain the data or you can do research online or at your local library. A professional service will usually be able to drill down to provide more information than you can find on your own, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t collect some useful and free data.
Government Web sites, such as the U.S. Census (www.census.gov) and the Bureau of Economic Analysis (www. bea.doc.gov), provide regional statistics. Chambers of commerce often have a wealth of information available to members. Trade associations are also a good source of statistical data. Another site, www.esribis.com, offers free profile information by region through the ZIP code lookup, and www.consumerpsychology.net and www.consumerpsychology.com are worth a look.
Based on what you uncover in your research, you should have a better sense of the size of your primary audience and some of their lifestyle choices.
Use the information you’ve gathered to figure out the types of marketing tactics that will resonate with them. For example, a television commercial that runs on MTV is probably not an effective way to reach women who fit that sample profile we developed.
Another approach is to target a problem (remember that successful marketing often boils down to providing solutions to problems) rather than a specific group of people.
One of the best examples of this tactic is Apple’s marketing of the iPod. You can’t categorize an iPod owner by age or gender. Teens, adults, tweens and even senior citizens own iPods. They’re not distinguished by lifestyle either. Business executives, students, athletes and travelers all enjoy listening to their iPods.
Apple targeted a problem shared by people from all demographics by asking, “How can people essentially carry thousands of CDs in their pockets?” Answer: The iPod. Problem solved.
Let the hunt begin.