Know your customer & grow.... #72
- Adrian Dionisio - business737 owner
- Jul 12, 2022
- 5 min read
Updated: Dec 15, 2024
Business success follows when you know and understand your customer. You use this knowledge to persuade potential and existing customers that buying from you is in their best interests, that it is the logical and sensible choice.
This article will analyse the following topics;
What is a target customer
Why is it important to know your target customer
How to identify your customer and find your target market
How to satisfy your customer needs
What is a target customer?
A target customer is the person that's most likely to buy your product or service.
A target market is a group of target customers with shared demographics.
Target consumers and markets should influence and drive any businesses' marketing and advertising strategies. Why? Because it is their attention you want to capture, their interest you want to win. To do this you need to know and understand them. Their problems, their needs, wants and desires.
Ideally marketing campaigns and communications will formulate messages specifically around the target consumer attributes. This is why it is so important to understand your target consumer, so you can speak their language and offer the things that is valuable to them.
You offer what your customer wants and needs
You solve their problems and make their life better
Your product or service has the ability to be preferred by the customer
Your product or service contains an attribute they desire
The target consumer has buying power and can provide you with sales and profits
The target consumer has an unmet desire that your product or service can fulfil
Specific Attributes of a Target Customer
It is important to understand and identify some of the specific attributes of target customers. They include
Demographics
age
race
ethnicity
gender
marital status
income
education
employment
Routine
Unmet desires
Requirements
Uncertainties
Purchasing power
How the consumer will use the product or service
Understanding their attributes will prove to be useful. It will provide countless benefits. It gives you the ability to communicate in ways they will understand and respond to, both emotionally and logically (read more here).
A target consumer group can be defined by an array of categories: age group, marital status, social memberships, athletics, etc. To take it a step further, you can also utilise any combination of these attributes.
Why is it important to know your target customer?
Really knowing your target customer will make your business more efficient and effective. From top to bottom.
How can you make a valuable product / service if you don't know they type of person who'll want it? How can your marketing be effective if you don't know who your messages are aim for? How can your sales process be any good if you don't understand your customer? How can you be innovative if you don't understand the needs to those buying from you? You can't. This is why you need to know your customer.
Clear focus on who your business will serve
Why those consumers need what your business offers
Improves Marketing Ability
Reduces costs
Increases Revenues
Boosts Profits
Helps Prioritize Resources
Increase leads
Increases Planning Precision
Provides More Information to Lenders
Marketing efficiency
Identifying your audience allows your business to focus marketing efforts and resources on the groups that are most likely to buy from you. You reduce costs and make your core processes more efficient. This is the aim of the business game.
Create Value
As a business owner we need to adjust and tailor our product / service to to satisfy client’s needs. To do this we need to know all about them. Only then can we identify the product features they want. We can shape our offering to their needs. We can provide them with the most value possible (read here).
Managing Expectations
If you know what your clients want and you know what your product or service delivers, you can clearly explain to customers what the result will be. You can effectively manage their expectations, which will have a two-fold effect on your business. First, you will discourage customers who have unrealistic expectations of what you are offering. Secondly, you’ll be left with a satisfied pool of customers who will likely come back for more.
How to identify your customer
Start by taking a look at your current customers and client base. What are their habits, their goals wants and needs? Try to identify their fears. How do they make their buying decisions.
You can profile and organise customers into specific groups that have similar goals or characteristics. It provides ways of really understanding and knowing your customers.
Analyse your offerings. Ask yourself what problems your products and services solve, and, in turn, to whom they appeal.
Conduct market research.
Create customer profiles and market segments.
Assess the competition
You can classify your target customers in the following four categories:
Geographic
Demographic
Psychographic
Behavioural
How to Find Your Target Audience
Use Google Analytics to learn more about your customers.
Create a reader persona to target blog content.
Look at social media analytics.
Use Facebook Insights.
Check on website performance.
Engage with social media audiences.
Finally, and possibly most importantly is who do you want to work with? These are they people that you get on best with, often effortlessly. These people should be the ones you aim for!
How to satisfy your customer needs
Understand Your Customer’s Needs
Listen to their Feedbacks.
Set Realistic Expectations.
Pay Attention and study your competitors.
Be Consistent in Communicating with Your Customers.
Take User Experience as a Priority.
Foster Loyalty through Proactive Customer Relations.
Hone in on your target markets
Study your competitors
Make better use of business resources
Focus on providing value to customers
Leverage big data
Remember the 5 basic needs of customers
Friendliness.
Empathy.
Fairness.
Control.
Alternatives.
Information.
Time.
Conclusion
What do clients really want? They want to be understood. Clients want to know that you get them, get needs, wants, desires, their business, get their industry, get their challenges, and get what they want to achieve. That you seriously get it.
They expect that your business has some experience and specialised knowledge, that you know the market and have spent time on research and testing.
Customers absolutely do NOT want you to sell them something, even something that’s wonderful. They want you to work with them to achieve a mutual goal, by being responsive to the customer’s concerns and ways of doing business. Ideally, customers want you to become integral to their success.
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