Know Thy Customer

Do you know your customer?

Let’s use an example:

Say I run a Personal Training company and I am targeting women, but within that large group there is a smaller subgroup that is my ideal customer.

She would look like this:

28-35 professional women, affluent. Have $$ to spend on a high-end training

Lifestyle: Busy, on the go, likes to train 3-4 times a week.

Eating habits: Conscious of her diet, likes to find the balance between eating out and in.

You can model your ideal customer after an existing customer. Give this customer a name. For our example, let’s call her Veronica.

Sure, you may not know exactly what her likes and dislikes are, but by creating a picture of her or modeling her after an existing customer you have a better idea of who she is.

You may find out that she is on the go and doesn’t have time for lengthy blog articles but rather quick workout tips, and easy recipes that she can incorporate into her busy lifestyle.

Veronica is your customer persona. She is the person whom you are targeting when you design your products and services.  Sure, not all customers may be Veronicas  but having that picture in your mind makes everything clearer.  Not only when you market your services but also when it comes to creating content that in turn will draw the type of customer you want to attract to you.

Remember, it’s not all about you (as in your business). Sure, you can talk about your services occasionally BUT what does Veronica want to learn more about? What would interest her? What will make her come back to you as a repeat customer? Demonstrating expertise through helpful, useful information?

Once you have identified your customer persona(s) (you can have several), you can easily start to figure out what will interest them. And you don’t have to guess. You are in direct contact with your customers; poll them, ask them what types of things they want to learn more about and what areas of your expertise you can share.  The beauty of now is that we have so many tools at our disposal to get an idea of our existing customers (as well as potential customers) likes and dislikes.

Identifying your customer persona will feedback into your product development as well, you will start to question said product addition or new service that you want to add because you will think twice and ask yourself-“Is this valuable to Veronica? ” or “Will Veronica pay for this service?”

By narrowing in on your customer persona, you can not only figure out how to better serve them with your products and services but also how to communicate with them.  As a result, creating content that is appealing to them becomes a lot easier, and you are no longer blogging blindly or at a loss of what to write about. You will also start to see that blogging or tweeting or managing a Facebook community is not outside of or separate from your existing marketing strategy but rather an integrated part of it.