6 Questions to Accurately Identify Your Ideal Customer
While all business owners would love to have the entire world need their offerings, marketing to that many people is not only unrealistic, it’s also ineffective. Believe it or not, narrowing down your target audience is actually one of the best ways to improve your sales.
Seriously! 2018 is going to be your year if you start marketing your business to your ideal customer. Before diving headfirst into marketing efforts, you will need to take a good look at your current customers and begin analyzing their characteristics. Ask yourself these six questions to identify the living and breathing people who want, and more importantly, need your offerings:
1. Where are your customers located?
Think about where your current customers. Are they located in the same city as you? What states or countries are they in? Understanding the locations of your customers will allow to better understand their demographics, likes, dislikes, aspirations etc., allowing you to develop messaging that will resonate with them.
2. Where do they work?
Analyze the industries you specifically want to target. Depending on your product or service, there might be many answers to this question. For example, if you have a construction company, you might want to target private housing, public education or commercial office buildings.
3. What is their job title?
Now that you know which industries to target, when you start marketing to them, who will you be trying to reach? If your company offers corporate events services, contacting the CEO may not be as effective as reaching out to the executive assistant, public relations manager, or the company events coordinator.
4. What do they need?
Think about why your ideal customer might look for a product or service such as yours. What will make them more successful at their jobs? What are the risk factors? What are their long-term goals? If you offer a service, some examples might include outsourcing, time savings or cost-efficiency.
5. How do you meet their needs?
Now that you have analyzed what your potential client needs, you can address how you fill the void. Think about how your offerings help them achieve their goals, make their lives easier, or provide a solution to a problem they have.
6. What would trigger them to purchase your product or service?
At what point in the sales cycle do your consumers commit to making a purchase? Some products or services are more impulsively purchased than others. For example, financial services have longer sales cycles as consumers do extensive research before deciding who they trust with their life savings. For this reason, an example of a purchase trigger for a bank might be trust, credibility, or lower interest rates.
“So in the end, we must master our knowledge of who are the target customers, who and what influences them, and how to create highly satisfying customer experiences.” - Philip Kotler
If you have answered these questions and are ready for your business to attract your ideal customer, the next step is to build an in-depth marketing strategy. At Marketing Eye, our talented team of executives will implement a tremendous amount of research on your industry, your ideal customers, and your competitors to craft a 12-month marketing strategy that will effectively communicate your brand to desired audiences. Give us a call today and find out how we can get your phone ringing.
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