“If you don’t know who that target market is, and what your ideal customer wants and needs, it is hard to develop both the products and services that meets those needs as well as the sales and marketing approaches that are likely to succeed.” 

Know Your Target Customer

As entrepreneurs, however, it is not as if we have large marketing budgets where we can do large scale surveys, market research or focus groups. In light of that, here are a few techniques you can use to hone in on who that target market is and how you can best serve their needs.

• Don’t Assume Anything. It is likely that your initial impressions may be based on nothing more than your gut. Don’t have any preconceived notions in place. Start with a blank slate and let the information you learn through the process color your thinking.
• Create a Mock Persona. This persona is basically a fictional character who exhibits all the traits an “average” member of your target audience is expected to have. Include factors like age, sex, education level and income, as well as disposition factors like temperament, sensitivity or curiosity. Get as detailed as you can.
• Learn From Others. Read up on some case studies, examples and psychological analyses by marketers who have come before you. Sources include industry reporters, general market researchers and, in some cases, sociologists. Filter your data to ensure the research is as relevant and as recent as possible.
• Conduct a Quantitative Survey. Take advantage of some of the free or inexpensive survey tools online to survey some potential audiences. Don’t focus the survey on just what you think may be your target market – open it up to a broader set of individuals to make sure you are not skewing your results. Use multiple choice questions that can give you hard statistics that can teach you about your audience’s habits.
• Conduct Small-Scale Qualitative Surveys. Complement your quantitative research with qualitative research — the data won’t be as objective, but you’ll learn more detailed insights on your audience’s psychological makeup. Target a small sample of audience members, and use open-ended questions to get long responses you can interpret. Again, ask questions relevant to your brand and product like, “What does the following phrase mean to you?” or “What do you feel when you see this image?”
• Learn from The Competition. Established competitors have likely already done market research in developing their products and service. Learn from them and pay attention to the tones and themes of the marketing messages they use when attracting customers. It is likely to give you some insight into the customer’s profile. In the process you may even find something about customers that you can exploit to your advantage.
• Analyze Others Selling to Your Audience. Look at how companies that sell products and services different than yours but are targeted to the same market talk to the audience. See how they position themselves and what messaging they use.
• Watch the Social Ecosystem Around Your Customer. Learn what your potential customers are saying through social media and other online channels. You can do this via social listening software or by tapping into groups and conversations in the most popular social media forums. Find “pockets” of your customers and listen to what they are saying. You would be surprised how much you can learn from one Facebook or Linked In group.
• Watch How Customers Interact with Your Brand. You can use social listening software again, and tap into Google Analytics to examine user behavior on your site. Evaluate how your target demographics are interacting with your brand: Do you get lots of blog comments and social shares? Use this data to fine-tune your approach.

None of these individuals techniques by itself is designed to pin down your average customer. What you are looking to do is to look at your average customer from multiple lenses. Craft all these different perspectives into one consolidated view of your customer. Once you have, you will be able to better tailor your sales and marketing approaches to meet the needs of this audience.

Developing a deep knowledge of your ideal customer, a concept known in the marketing realm as buyer persona profiling, is critical to increasing the relevance of your efforts.

What is a Buyer Persona?

A buyer persona is a vibrant profile of your company’s ideal customer. This should capture the type of person with an incredible need for your product and a love for your company; who will remain a loyal client for years, and tell all of their friends about how remarkable you are. A buyer persona can help you identify the forms of messaging which will convert the right website visitors into leads, and leads into customers.

Great marketers rely on demographics and consumer insights to target their marketing. Major companies may leverage focus groups to determine consumer reactions to their marketing messages, and spend significant time and budget compiling demographic insights. A buyer persona profile is the great equalizer, because it allows companies of all sizes to improve their targeting. The following elements should make an appearance in your persona profile:

• Demographics or Firmographics. What are the basic facts about your ideal customer, including age, gender, and geographic location? If you’re a B2B company, how big are the companies you’re trying to acquire? What industries are they in?
• Pain Points. Why does your buyer persona need your solution in the first place? A pain point is exactly what it sounds like: a problem or need that’s causes a customer to search for branded products or services and spend money in order to solve it. Whether customers are driven to your company by a major life event or a need to prove a point to their peers, you should know how your company is used to solve problems.
• Priorities. Do your customers tend to be budget shoppers, or do they worry about impressing their social circle? Do you sell to executive assistants with a need to please a particularly choosy boss? Priorities allow you to create marketing materials that cut to the chase.
• Values. Are your ideal customers environmentally-conscious? Do they aspire to grow their company quickly? It’s critical to address values separately from priorities, because they affect how your company should define the bigger picture. Being able to clearly define how your company will help your consumers achieve their wants, whether that’s saving money on their monthly grocery budget or performing their job more efficiently, should guide your company’s presentation.
• Research Habits. Are your customers engaged with the web every waking moment, or are they just starting to warm up to the idea of social media and search engines? The best way to determine research habits is through quantitative website metrics, specifically referral traffic sources and the keywords driving the highest volume of search to your website. Ideally, this research should be performed with the help of closed-loop analytics, which track how website visitors who become customers find your website, and the pages they engage with during their prospect stage.
• Identifying Factors. What makes your buyer persona different from any other 26 year-old public relations manager who aspires to own her own PR firm? It’s probably difficult to tell why some customers who fit your demographics profiles purchase, and others don’t, but one of the best ways to determine this factor is likely through interviews with your sales team. Inquire about the factors they used to distinguish hot leads, which could include anything from the questions asked during the research stage to a company’s organizational chart.
• Psychographic Characteristics. Would your ideal customers rather spend their weekend camping, or exploring urban coffee shops? Do they identify primarily as an early-adopter, or are they apathetic toward technology? Simply defined, psychographic characteristics are the collision of psychology and advertising, formally “attitudes, opinions, and personality traits.” By developing an understanding of how your product fits into the larger identity of your buyer persona, your content marketing can become significantly more vibrant.

How to Create a Buyer Persona Profile

For established companies, making the move to schedule interviews with your existing customer base should be the first step towards creating a buyer persona. Startups and companies in the earliest planning phases need to interview as well, but just need to be a little more creative to do so.

• Talk to Both Happy and Unhappy Customers. Extend the invitation to chat to both your best and worst customers, in order to gain a more comprehensive understanding of the factors that make your buyer persona different. Engaging with customers who’ve had a negative or mediocre experience with your product or service can salvage damaged relationships, but it can also help you gain a better understanding of how your product is perceived from the outside. Interviewing customers of all satisfaction levels will help you pinpoint your buyer persona more effectively.
• Offer Incentives. Offer clear incentive for customers to participate in your research, which can range from a discount to a small, useful gift. Explain the estimated length of the session, define the fact you’re trying to gain better insight of your customers, and assure your interview participants that you won’t be releasing their personal information.
• Keep them Short. Try your best to keep the session to 20 minutes or less.
• Try These Sample Questions. Choose the most relevant options from the sample questions below:
  • How do you research products and services? Do you trust online reviews?
  • Do you use social media? What is your favorite network?
  • How much time do you spend online? Do you use smartphones and tablets?
  • What is your job title and career goals?
  • What skills, knowledge, and tools are required to succeed at your job?
  • What are the biggest challenges you face in life or work?
  • What blogs, news sources, or media do you consume on a regular basis?
  • What is your educational background?
  • What are some of your favorite brands and products?
  • Do you prefer to communicate via email, phone, or in-person?
  • Do you like learning through videos and webinars, or eBooks better?
  • How do you search for information online?
  • What are your long-term goals?
• Combine Metrics with Insights. It’s critical to focus on acquiring the insights that are difficult to track through web analytics. It’s important to use your time with customers to gain a bigger picture of attitudes, values, and habits. Use these insights, in conjunction with metrics and contributions from your sales and customer service team, to develop a document which details every aspect of how your ideal customer will find and select your company.

Mistakes to Avoid While Creating Buyer Personas

It’s not easy to compile an accurate profile which combines reality with your sales and marketing goals. Failing to bring conversations with your customers into the equation is a fundamental mistake. Here are a few more mistakes to avoid in creating your persona:

• Asking the Wrong Questions. If you take full advantage of your customer’s time, the insights you glean will be gold. You’ll learn more about the people you’re trying to acquire than your competitors know, and gain the power to create marketing that win’s the right people’s hearts and minds. However, unless your ideal customer is an incredibly sophisticated marketer, avoid asking questions that will just be confusing. It’s additionally critical to avoid offending anyone. The worst types of interview questions could include:
  • How many pages do you typically visit on a website before becoming a lead?
  • When did your [pain point] get bad enough you had to buy our product?
  • What did you think of our landing page form?

Avoid jargon, technical questions, or anything that can be construed as overly personal. Your interviews should make your customers feel like you value their business and insights, not consider them research subjects.

• Developing Too Many Buyer Personas. Many major companies and savvy small businesses have more than one buyer persona. However, if you’re just beginning to practice profiling, trying to target 15 different types of customers can be overwhelming. Focus on capturing your ideal customer, getting the interview process down, and applying the results to your sales and marketing strategy before you move on.
• Filling in the Blanks. Next to simply skipping the interview stage, the worst thing you can do is to make leaps of judgment while profiling. Never assume that customers are attracted to your company because you’re focused on community service, or that your technical white papers are the star of your content marketing strategy.

Decisions made without customer insights aren’t always sound, and a buyer persona based on personal opinion simply won’t advance your marketing game. Buyer persona profiles can be something of a silver bullet for companies of all sizes and in virtually any industry, because the insights allow you to gain a sufficiently deep understanding of your customers to answer their questions and address their needs from the moment they find your website.

Curious about free tools and templates to help you get started? Check out our blog article Resources for Creating Buyer Personas Using the Right Content, which includes links to 11 of the best articles, interviews and tip sheets available on the web.