If you are at the early stages of setting up your own business, there are several steps that you will no doubt have to take. For instance, you might have identified your USP – that special something that customers can find only with your product. However, what about your customer base? Who is your business targeted towards? Pin-pointing precisely who your primary customer is can be tricky, especially if you are a new business. To help you out, read on to discover some tips for how to identify your ideal customer.
Build a set of customer profiles
Though fictional, customer profiles (also known as buyer personas) are a great way of providing information about a particular customer that gives you a solid base to work from. They include common details that these customers tend to share, such as age, hobbies, income, and location. Use solid research from social media analytics and customer questionnaires to inform your profile; through this you will see a clear figure emerge of the person who buying your product most frequently, as well as perhaps a secondary customer base. For instance, a trend-led makeup line might have as its primary customer base females aged 16-24 with disposable income, with a secondary customer base of parents buying birthday gifts.
Create a customer journey map
A customer journey map is a detailed plan outlining the steps your customer takes during their interactions with your company. Doing this allows you to make more effective use of customer engagement strategies and analytics tools, enabling you to continue to improve the overall customer experience at your business. A customer success journey map will ultimately remove the need for ineffective, unfocused marketing, providing you with detailed information on your most successful customer bases and giving you the tools to focus your marketing efforts solely on these successful channels.
Research
Key to getting to know your ideal customer, whether that is with building customer profiles or drawing up a customer journey map, is to carry out detailed research that you can then use to inform your plans. Analyze social media analytics to get an idea of the type of person who most regularly frequents your various channels. For instance, you might discover that your Instagram page is accessed most regularly by women between the ages of 20 and 35, whereas a wider demographic checks out your Twitter feed. You could also send out a customer questionnaire on a regular basis, as a way of obtaining specific information directly from your customer base.
Communicate with your customers
Take advantage of social media by using it to engage directly with your customer base. Not only will this help to establish a trusting relationship between yourself and your customers, you will be able to see exactly who is buying your products. You can use social media to directly ask customers what they would like to see your business doing in the future, so that you can build a business around providing top customer satisfaction.
