Are you one of the many business owners who struggle to meet sales goals, question why they haven’t received any new customers, or claim their product is “for everyone”?  If so, your problems will not go away until you take a step back and redefine your target market, and more importantly, your target customer. This is the missing piece to your puzzle! Customer profiling can be a very insightful tool for sales and marketing. In this article, we will discuss the importance of customer profiling.

Without a proper analysis of the current market, fully understanding its products/services, and creating a very specific description of the ideal client, most business owners will never actually see their real target customers, or effectively close sales with them.

You can avoid wasting money on marketing to the wrong people and start attracting happy and loyal customers by creating a set of customer profiles.

What is Customer Profiling?

Customer profiling is primarily gathering all the information you can about people you WANT to sell products/services to, and grouping these potential customers together in categories. It is more than your general “target market” because you take the time to understand your customers.

5 Ways to Group Your Customers 

Demographics: Common demographics to consider are age, gender, ethnicity, occupation, education, marital status, etc.

Geographics: Where are your customers? You can find your ideal customer by country, region, state, city, and even within a mile radius on some platforms. If you’re looking for customers close to your physical store, grouping by geographics may be something to consider.

Life Stages: Dig deeper into your demographics category and group ideal customers by which stage of life they are in. For example, single adults shop differently than adults who have recently had a child or adults with adult children. Are they new parents, empty nesters, or something else entirely? 

Psychographics: Group together customers with shared interests, lifestyle choices, attitudes, and similar mindsets. TomoTip: Utilize social media to discover these customers or send a survey out via email to current customers to gather information.

Behaviors: Understanding how and why customers act the way they do, how they behave now in the present, and how they may behave in the future are all important to know.  For example, some questions to consider in regard to certain actions are: Why? When? How Often? Who/What Influences Behavior?

Why customer profiling is crucial

As mentioned above, knowing exactly what type of customers you want to sell your products to makes marketing a whole lot easier. With a completed customer profile – from their hometown, educational level, and lifestyle, down to the reasons when, where and why they may buy; you can now recraft your marketing messages to reach who you want! Here is an interesting example of customer profiling done on people who fish recreationally. 

Since the messages will be designed to target your customers – marketing ads, graphics, and messages will begin to jump literally out at the new and loyal customers, drawing them to your product!

Take advantage of this free downloadable customer profile template to get started. Next, try research. Search to discover if any national or state associations have published research on your industry and its customers and made the research available online. Finally, you can use tools. Try setting up a Make My Persona on Hubspot, or sending out surveys via SurveyMonkey or Google Forms. You can also go deeper with analyzing your current customers with CRM software.  

Contact Tomo360 if you have any questions or are in need of marketing services or marketing guidance at [email protected] or 978-253-4922.

Still curious? Read this next: Successful Marketing Programs for Current Customers.