We recently talked about how important it is that the content, social media, and search teams at a marketing company work together. But where can they start? A good point of focus to start at is who you’re doing all the work for in the first place. No, silly—not you. Your customer! Who are they and what do they want? What do they need that they don’t know they need? In our blog today, we’re going to give you some of our tips here at Zen Media for crafting the perfect Customer Profile.
What are their demographics?
The last time you may have read up on demographics may have been high school; what’s a country’s population, main export, main language, etc. But it’s time to start thinking of demographics in a whole new light—how they relate to your customer specifically. Or, if you’re an agency like us here at Zen Media, the customer of your client.
Here are some demographic questions you should be able to answer about your customer:
What is my customer’s age or age range?
What is my customer’s gender?
What is my customer’s relationship status? Are they single or are they married? Do they have children?
What language does my customer use? Do they use more than one?
What income does my customer make?
Where does my customer live? Do they live here 100% of the time or is travel involved?
Knowing things like this about your customer may seem the most basic but starting with a strong foundation when building a customer profile is key. These are questions you are going to need to know the answer to later on when you start asking yourself more questions.
What are their behaviors?
What do your customers do with the information above? You’re going to need how they distribute their income and how they live their lives. The choices they make in their every day behavior will help you cater to what they’re looking for and how you can help them find it.
Here are some behavior questions you should be able to answer about your customer:
How does your customer spend the money they make?
How does your customer search for the service you provide?
What services similar to yours has your customer used in the past? What wasn’t working for them?
What goals does your customer have professionally and personally?
What is your customer’s personality?
This part of building a customer profile can seem like the most fun, especially if you have an imagination. But remember when you’re answering your profile questions for personality, to be honest. You don’t want to market to a customer who isn’t really yours, but rather the one you wish you have. Be realistic and market towards the customer you have.
Here are some personality questions you should be able to ask about your customer:
What interests does your customer have?
What are your customer’s values?
How would your customer describe themself to someone new?
What is most important to them?
How do I learn more?
When you’re answering these questions, it’s important to use as much real data as possible so that you aren’t making up your answers but you have solid facts to backup your material. But there is a time when you may not know the answer to a question, or if you do, you’d feel more comfortable getting the answer confirmed.
Whether or not you think you’re sure about the customer profile you’ve created, we suggest going to your customer directly and double-checking everything. In the end, would your customer answer your profiling questions in the same way you would? If not, then you dodged a bullet—but there is still a problem here. Make sure you are on the same page as your customer before moving forward.
Remember, these questions aren’t only for B2C companies!
When we say “customer,” it’s easy to think that this post is one that is completely targeting Business-to-Consumer companies. But that’s not the truth at all. Yes, it is thought that B2C companies are more likely to spend time on customer profiles, but they are just as important to Business-to-Business companies. For a B2B company, another business is a customer. Remember, when you’re working with a business, they still have annual revenue, a budget, and a preference in how they spend their money; they still have values (remember, a business’ brand is its identity); they still prefer to make decisions in a specific manner. If you’re working with a business and not a customer, still ask yourself these questions!
Remember, there isn’t always one type of customer
We wanted to take a quick moment to remind you that companies are complex and they don’t always cater to one type of customer. What does that mean? More fun for you! Take a look at the data you have available and create more than one customer profile; we recommend creating at least two or three customer profiles to fit different situations a company may face.
We also wanted to remind you that different departments may see your customer differently. Remember to keep your strategies for social media, search, and content in mind when thinking about your customer and how to properly target them.
Do you have experience with customer profiles?
Here at Zen Media, we’ve got clients who are both B2B and B2C, meaning that we’re constantly on our toes making sure that we are targeting the correct customer for each specific client, all of which have very different goals. We love what we do and creating customer profiles is a way to keep our creativity alive. How do you feel about customer profiles? How do you go about crafting them? We’d love to hear what you think! Feel free to leave a comment here on the blog or even get in touch with us directly!
