How to Profile Your Customers?

customer profiling

Great marketers understand their customers and help create products suitable for them. Customer profiling is important and it can assist in pinpointing the customer group most likely to utilize your products or services.

Why Customer Profiling is Important?

Building customer profiles help in:

  • Better communication
  • Finding great opportunities
  • Identifying niches with low competition
  • Increasing profits
  • Attracting more customers

What is Psychographics?

In market research, customers are studied and classified according to their attitudes, aspirations, and lifestyles to help create a detailed customer profile. This  process is called psychographics. Other factors that may be considered include a buyer’s spending habits, hobbies, and values. In short, psychographics helps you understand why a customer buys a specific product or service.

Interviewing current clients and studying your website analytics can help you arrive at a psychographic profile of your customers. One example would be a travel company which aligns itself with adventure and fun. Their target is likely to be young, single, professionals or students who like traveling solo or with friends rather than family.

Understanding Demographics

Details such as the customer’s gender, age, marital status, family size, education level, occupation, income, and health status fall under demographics. Take the example of a company selling women’s apparel. Their targeting is bound to be women of a specific age group who have particular interests and a certain spending power.

Profiling by Geography

The area where a customer lives including details such as the district, city, state and country assume significance because they can help outline the specific boundaries within which you will operate. For instance, when selling products that are dependent on climatic conditions such as air conditioners or sporting equipment, geography plays an important role.

How to Create a Customer Profile?

First of all, you will need to identify why a customer would want to buy what you are offering. Secondly, divide your overall target market into segments before starting your research.

  • Create a broad description of the ideal customer.
  • Identify user goals for each customer type and their characteristics
  • Identify how these customers will find you

This is where the right understanding of psychographics, demographics, and geography comes to your rescue. Used alone, none of these three can give you a complete picture of user preferences. By building up a database of information from all three segments, you can understand where to focus your marketing resources in order to ensure maximum effect.

Psychographic and demographic details of large groups can be compiled through a customer survey. If it’s a retail store, then you can distribute survey cards or seek customer feedback in person. Putting in a suggestion box is also a good way of collating data. Another way of seeking information is to include a questionnaire and return envelope with monthly bills or statements.

The data you collect from current customers will help you get insight on potential customers. It will aid you in getting their attention. As you sift through the available information, you might come across an opportunity to bring up additional products for this segment. It might also give fodder for thought on how you can improve an existing product.

Zeroing In on The Target Market

After categorizing all your customers into different segments, you can choose to evaluate the feasibility and profitability of each or just a couple of them.

Competitors might be missing out on certain smaller segments of customers and you can turn this to your advantage.

If you are looking at a new market, starting small might be prudent.

The more information you have about your customers, the easier it is to come up with specific marketing strategies, spot opportunities, and sell products.

 

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