Identifying your ideal customer
The first, essential element of any targeted marketing strategy is identifying the ideal customer for your product or service. Actually, this is crucial for anyone who wants to build a successful business.
And it applies no matter what you’re selling; whether it’s a car, a washing machine, diapers, or legal services. Any successful strategy relies on having a basic understanding of the specific target market.
How to identify your target audience
1. Compile the demographics and habits of your ideal customer
Start to identify your target audience by thinking about the characteristics and behaviors that make a person your ideal customer.
These demographic and psychographic factors include:
- Age
- Gender
- Cultural heritage
- Geography
- Occupation
- Marital status
- Income
- Lifestyle
- Type of residence
- Education level
- Interests
- Common problems
To summarize the findings, think in terms of one to a few people who represent your customer base, and then build an ideal customer avatar for each one.
For example, a 35-year-old married woman with two children and a full-time job. You must also try to detail what kind of residence she lives in and where its located, as well as her interests and common problems, such as being too busy to [insert pain point]. The more specific you can get, the better.
These avatars will be influenced by…
2. Studying your existing customers and accessing third-party research
If you have an established business, you’ll want to study your existing customers. Who is buying or ordering your product? Is it single men, married women, Millennials, Baby Boomers, outdoor enthusiasts?
Look at which of your products have the best sales record and think about why they do better than others, and with whom. Understanding the buying habits of your customers helps you determine the best way to reach them and with what message. There are of course differences between the demographics and psychographics of someone looking to buy a minivan versus a BMW, for example.
In addition to your own, highly-valuable experience with current customers, there are third-party research services that can add layers of contextual demographic and psychographic information tailored to your industry, products or services, and geographic area.
3. Conduct a competitive analysis
You should also do a competitive analysis by looking at similar businesses in your area (or your industry). For example, a dealership that sells Hondas would research what competing dealerships are doing, in terms of pricing and deals, as well as other marketing specifics. Who are your competitors targeting in their marketing? What kind of marketing vehicles are they using?
You’ve defined your ideal customer and the media and products/services they use. What’s next?
Studying what you believe to be your ideal customer won’t tell you the full story. If you own a car dealership, simply advertising to everyone who falls under the basic profile of a car buyer won’t be very effective.
That’s still a pretty wide group. Not everyone in that demographic is actually looking to buy a car right now, and you’ll end up wasting vast resources marketing to people who aren’t even thinking about a purchase.
As we discuss in the next installment of this series, the basic profile of an ideal customer interface with both predictive analytics and the latest actionable, real-time data that pinpoint individuals who are actually ready to buy.
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