Creating accurate consumer profiles is something many businesses do in order to learn as much about their audience as possible so they can effectively market to them and get the best results. This handy guide will tell you how you can go about creating accurate consumer profiles yourself so that you can target who you should be targeting and get out of this world results for your business.
Without this, your marketing efforts won't be nearly as targeted and you probably won’t get the results that your company is capable of getting. If this is something you’re interesting in doing, read on to learn more...
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Come Up With Definitive Answers About Your Business
The first step, before you even look at your customers, is to come up with definitive answers about your business. Being clear about what your business does will make you far more effective when you do come to create those profiles. Ask yourself the following questions:
- What are you selling?
- What market are you in?
- What are the advantages of your product?
- How is your company standing against the competition?
You’ll find it much easier to make decisions regarding your customers when you have an accurate picture of your business using the above outline. Ideally, you will know these things already. If not, don’t fret. Write them down now!
Deciding The Type Of Customer You Are Profiling
There are two main things that businesses tend to do when consumer profiling.
The first customers you can choose to profile are those who have already worked with you. You split them up into targeted groups so you can make a bigger and better impact with these clients. If you have not been getting customers, then you must decide on the personas you will target to start with. The approach you decide on will depend on where you’re at at the moment. Even if you’ve already been making an effort, it’s never too late to start profiling to get even better results. Many business owners even choose to take an online MBA specializing in marketing as it allows them to understand what they should be doing with their business and covers consumer profiling. How you invest in yourself is up to you.
How To Start Creating Consumer Profiles
So, how do you begin creating consumer profiles when you are ready? Consumer profiles are created through research. It’s up to you to put as much time and effort into this research as you can muster to get the best, most accurate results imaginable. You can do surveys and interviews, as well as look through your contacts and uncover trends. It can also be a good idea to ask your team for feedback on the leads they are dealing with most often. Set up interviews to find out what people like about your product or service, over the phone or over email. You could even conduct some persona interviews if you can find people who would be willing and offer them an incentive!
Persona interview questions
Here, we have an example of some of the persona interview questions you will want people to answer. They will help you to create an effective consumer profile:
- Gender
- Age
- Relationship status
- Education
- Location
- Economy group
- Do they have a family?
- How do they consume content?
- How do they communicate?
- What associations do they belong to?
- What is their job?
- What tools do they use in their job?
- What are they responsible for?
- What does it mean to be successful in their role?
- What are their hobbies?
- What blogs/magazines do they read?
- How do they prefer to interact with vendors?
- What are their values/fears?
Of course, you may want to add questions or change them depending on what type of business you have and who you are speaking to. Coming up with a list of your own questions that you believe will help the research is always a good idea.
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Thinking About Negative Personas
Yes, there’s such a thing as a negative consumer persona/profile too. So, how do you work this out?
You don’t have to put nearly as much effort into finding out who these people are. In short, they are customers that you don’t want for your business. For instance, people who are too advanced for what it is you offer. Of course you want as many people to work with your business as possible, but when you are realistic, you should have a good idea of who your business is for and who it is not for. Are there a group of people who are only likely to waste your time? People who will find your service or product too basic? People who aren't likely to want to work with you again? These are your negative personas, and being aware of them will further give you an idea of the approach you should take and the content you should write.
Combining With The Lifecycle Stage
The lifecycle stage refers to how far someone is in your sales cycle. By combining consumer profiles, negative profiles, and the lifecycle stage, you will be able to map out and create highly targeted and effective content that gets the results you want.
Use Social Media
Don’t forget that social media is a highly effective way of getting the results you want when creating consumer profiles. You can easily ask your audience questions or post surveys and see if they participate. You can do this over Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, or wherever you believe you are most likely to find your audience. Ideally, with all of the research you’ve undertaken, you will already know this. You don’t always have to try over the phone, and many people do not like speaking on the phone these days.
With this handy guide, you should be able to create accurate consumer profiles that help you to take a more targeted approach to your marketing online. You should find that you begin getting even better results when you use the information you’ve gathered to create content that perfectly targets your ideal markets. Leave your thoughts below!
