Know Your Customer, Grow your Business

Know Your Customer!

Don’t spend another penny on marketing until you’ve read this!

To build a highly successful business we need to understand things from the point of view of our customers – our very best customers.

This short article is about the first steps on a marketing journey, and forms the foundation upon which any good marketing campaign is based.

Before you decide to spend ￡000’s with your agency on Facebook, Google Ads, Website development, Video production, Podcasts, Radio, Direct Mail, Email marketing etc, make sure you’ve got this stuff properly covered.  

How can they be successful for you if they don’t know the target audience? 

The reality is that we see lots of company’s literally burning money on advertising without really understanding their audience. 

Let’s face it you probably haven’t allowed ￡50k in your marketing budget for the agency to do research (if you have then stop reading and have a great day!), and the truth is with a little work you can really make your marketing super relevant, interesting, credible, and desirable to your audience.

So, let’s make a start!

Did you ever hear about the Pareto principle or the 80/20 rule? Vilfredo Pareto was a 19th century Italian economist who noted that roughly 80% results came from 20% of resources. 

In business terms we often find 80% revenues come from 20% of the customers. It might vary a bit from business to business, but this is a pretty good rule of thumb. The thing about Pareto is that it works exponentially, see below:

? Look at the top 20% of your existing customers- probably producing around 80% of your revenue.

? Look again at the top 20% of this group (4%), same again? 

? So, this 4% of your customers could be providing around 60% plus of your revenue.

? This 4% represent your current A1 customers, the crème de la crème, and by learning about them we can work out how to find and engage with a lot more like them.

9 questions to define your A1 customer Avatar

1. Where can we find them? 

o Online and offline. 

o Be specific – Facebook groups, leisure activities, blog titles.

? If they read, what is it, (do they read or listen to audio books, podcasts) favourite TV shows, family activities.

o These insights influence where to advertise, what to advertise, tone and language.

2. Where do they get their information? 

? Google, blog, books, magazine, YouTube, webinars?

? Document your findings: ‘When Bex wants to learn about a topic, the first place she goes is Google search on her iPhone’. 

3. What are their biggest frustrations and challenges?

? These are the most important keys to defining your A1 customer avatar. 

? By knowing what it’s like to walk in your customer’s shoes, you’ll be able to create better products and services that address their specific pain points and problems.

? Your A1 customer’s frustrations and challenges are integral to the products and services you offer. 

? Knowing their biggest frustration and challenges will also determine the emotions you speak to in your copy and advertising. 

? There are a number of emotions behind the challenges and frustrations your A1 customer is experiencing – they could be sadness, anger, fear, remorse, hope, a desire for something better. 

? By speaking to exactly what your A1 customer is feeling, you’ll be able to connect with them emotionally on more than just a rational level. It will also reflect the types of stories you tell. 

? When your A1 customer sees a testimonial from a customer who solved their biggest frustrations and challenges with your product or service, then they are more likely to buy from you. They can see this positive transformation take place in someone else. 

4. What are their hopes, dreams, and desires? 

? When your products or services help your A1 customer attain their hopes, dreams, and desires, it becomes much easier to write copy for your landing pages, website.

? Creating relevant copy – Recognise and respond to their desires. 

For example:

Customer Desire I want to lose 10kgs before my summer holiday. 

Relevant Copy Our unique diet exercise plan, will help you get beach fit and lose 10-15kg in 60 days, guaranteed!

Customer Desire ‘I want to have my website ranked higher on Google. 

Relevant Copy Guaranteed Google rankings in 90 days or we work for free!

5. What are their biggest fears? 

? People are motivated more by pain than they are by pleasure. 

? They are more motivated by fear of loss than they are by the desire to gain something. 

? Therefore, addressing their fears when you talk to them is an incredibly important element to get your A1 customer to act, and motivate them to move away from what they fear most. 

? So how do we find out about our customers hopes and dreams, fears, and frustrations? Well Google is our friend here, try typing a few keywords into the search bar around your products and services and see what the auto-suggest menu brings up? It’s trying to help you find what you want using all the data it has collected from other searches and is an incredibly insightful tool.

? Try Facebook groups, YouTube, LinkedIn forums, anywhere your target audience congregate, you can go and listen in on the frequently asked questions that will help you build your avatar.

? Once you have all this information you can tabulate the results and recognise and rank the traits you find.

6. What is their preferred form of communication?

Communicate with your customers where they already are. Don’t try and move them onto something that is more convenient for you rather than where they already are. 

7. What phrases, exact language and vernacular do they use? 

? Is there a specific language and/or niche-specific terms being used in your customer’s mind for their hopes, dreams, pain, fears, and desires? 

? What industry terminology are they using, what specific vernacular and niche-specific terms? 

? Document the exact phrases and terminology they use and store them in a spreadsheet to spark ideas for website copy, landing pages, and ads. 

? Take specific comments from LinkedIn, Facebook Groups, YouTube, and document your audience’s word-for-word responses. 

? The goal here is for your A1 customer to feel like you’re speaking directly to them. 

8. What does a day in their life look like? 

Build up a detailed mental picture of their typical day based on all the stuff you learn about your top customers.

o 7:00am – Tom wakes up to the sound of marimbas on his iPhone’s alarm clock.

o 7:15am – lets Toby the dog out for a run around the garden and checks his inbox for emails that came in overnight. Then opens Facebook to see who’s commenting and liking his latest post. 

o 8:10am – Grinds the beans for his morning coffee, Kenyan – he’s an afficionado. 

o 8:30am – Indulges in 20 minutes pre-work Ted Talk podcast, hosted on Spotify, from his iPhone.

o 8.50am – Time to start work at the home office. Checks emails, and clears down his inbox

o 10:15am – Preps for Client meeting #1. 

o 10:30am – Has a team’s meeting with his client. 

o 11:45am – Writes up the meeting notes & emails out the action points to his team. 

o 12.45pm – Lunch with wife Rebecca and 2 home schooled children, Josh 7, and Milly 5.

o 2:00pm -  Prepping for meeting #2. 

o 2:30pm –  Meeting with Client.

o 3.45pm -  Writes up the meeting notes & emails out the action points to his team. 

o 4.15pm - 10-minute break with Becky, the kids are upstairs playing on their tablets

o 4.30pm - Brainstorms with the team how to generate more leads to meet quarterly growth goals and revenue targets. 

o 6:00pm – Closes the laptop, spends 20 minutes with the kids before getting changed and doing 20-minute run with Toby the French Bulldog listening to his daily mix on Spotify. He loves 80’s pop and electronica, and also EDM when he’s on his run.

o 7.00pm – supper with Becky, puts the kids to bed, Milly at 7.30pm, Josh at 8.00pm, with stories. Milly loves Little Miss stories, Josh is just starting to get into Harry Potter.

o 8.15pm – TV chillout time with Becky – catching up on Bridgerton, not really his thing but Beccy loves it and he’s happy to spend the time with her relaxing.

Now this might sound like an incredible amount of detail and many clients find this very difficult to grasp initially. It will pay dividends, and if on close inspection you can’t hazard a guess at any of this, then you need to speak to your best customers more! You don’t have to suddenly start calling and interrogating them, but treating them as you would your family and friends, sharing stuff about yourself and being genuinely interested in their lives, you’d be surprised at what we can learn, and how we can leverage that to build powerful and loyal relationships. Facebook is a great place to get to know more about your customers as well.

Why bother with this kind of exercise?

? Imagining what your ideal client’s daily life looks like adds an incredible personal element to your marketing. 

? It also becomes practical – when is the best time to email your prospects? 

? When are they most likely to respond? 

? When are they most attentive? 

? Your A1 customer is a completely different person at 8am on a Monday morning than at 6:30pm on a Friday. Be aware of this and use it in your marketing.

? The really important thing here is that Facebook collects around 200 pieces of information about each of its users, and you can upload your email details for your customers to Facebook. Facebook can then be used to create a “lookalike” audience of people you don’t know who share similar characteristics to your customers. Powerful huh?

9. What makes them happy?

? The customer journey is more than the exchange of money for goods and services. Your clients are emotional beings, and people want to interact with companies and brands that make them feel good about themselves. 

? Where are the touch points in your client’s journey where you can insert surprises, do the unexpected, be remarkable, and bring a smile to their face? Maybe it’s a handwritten thank-you note after signing up for your service, a personalised email sent on their birthday, or a free box full of company swag and cookies.

? Making the buyer’s journey a happy one can create a deeper level of emotional connection that improves both conversion and retention for the longer term.

The End Result 

? This technique works equally well for B2C businesses as B2B, we’re all human beings and we’re all motivated by emotion and reason.

? As you answer these questions, tabulate your findings in a simple spreadsheet – (reach out if you need help with this)

? You can now sort the results into similar characteristics and begin to understand the common factors between seemingly different people.

? Use these common factors to write a descriptive paragraph about your Avatar (the persona created by the various common features).

? The end result is a much deeper, more intimate understanding of where and how to reach your A1 customers, and how to speak to them.

? The compounding result will cause massive breakthroughs that can be harnessed to grow your business and dominate your market. 

? Defining your target market is one of the hardest parts of running a business. 

? The good news is that once you do it, everything else will quickly start falling into place. 

? You can now decide which medium to use to effectively reach them, and which marketing strategies they respond to. 

? Remember this isn’t a do it once and forget exercise, we should be constantly learning about our audience, we’re all evolving all the time – a product of our environment, and peoples needs and desires change with the circumstances they find themselves in.

Building your A1 customer Avatar Action Points 

1. Identify the 20% of customers who account for 80% of your sales volume and profits, and your Power 4% of customers. (20% of the 20%)

2. Identify what they struggle with. 

3. Organise your findings. 

4. Create your A1 customer avatar.

If you would like to know more about business building, drop me a line [email protected], better still call me on 07467 942352, I’d love to hear from you.