Meet Your Target Market! How to Build A Customer Profile

Years ago, I wrote direct mail marketing pieces for a well-known grocery delivery service. In my entire career, I’d never seen a company that had so meticulously built customer profiles through their extensive market research.

Every direct mail piece had to be repurposed for each one of their market segments. Their audiences consisted of budget buyers, classic customers, evening buyers, senior samplers, and platinum customers.

Every segment had well-documented purchasing habits and preferences. The work could sometimes be tedious, but I’m certain it was worthwhile.

One cannot argue with the $3B in revenue this company pulls in every year.

Does your content speak directly to your target audience? If it doesn’t, it should.

Here are 21 questions to ask yourself when creating a customer profile for each of your products and services:

1. What is the gender of your ideal customer?
2. What is their age or age range?
3. In what industry or profession do they work?
4. What is their education level?
5. Do they have young children, adult children, or no children?
6. What are their goals for the future?
7. What do they do in their free time?
8. What is their biggest fear?
9. What magazines/trade publications/industry blogs/websites do they read?
10. To what associations or organizations do they belong?
11. What is your customer’s problem and why are they seeking you out?
12. How do you solve their problem?
13. Where is the customer in the buying process? New? Shopping around?
14. Are they unsure about how your product/service can benefit them?
15. What is your customer’s chief complaint about your industry’s products or services?
16. Does your customer make decisions quickly or do they carefully consider before deciding?
17. Are your customers interested in status or do they not care what others think of them?
18. Do your customers need hard proof about the benefits of your service, such as statistics and studies?
19. Are your customers easy to do business with or do they need a lot of convincing?
20. Is the relationship they have with you crucial to closing the sale?
21. What are the four most common questions your potential customers ask?

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Of course, if your business is new, you might not know the answers to many of these questions and may have to hazard a guess. However, if you have an existing customer base, you could send out a survey to get an accurate picture of some of the profile questions. For example, what blogs do they read or where are they in the shopping process?

The more complete your customer profiles, the better your content will be; the more accurately you can identify pain points the easier it will be to demonstrate how your products or services can provide them with solutions.

Need help creating customer profiles? Contact me today. I’d love to help.