The key to your next marketing breakthrough- Customer Profile

Avatar, profile, the Voice of the Customer: Different words for “How well do you know the person that you’re trying to sell to?”

I think everyone I’ve ever worked with thinks they know their target market. Yet, they struggle with ads and referrals, and they think it’s a tactical problem. Most of the time, it is a message problem that originates from how little we know about our customers. 

How do you get to know your customer?

There are plenty of tools out there to understand your customer. You can use Google Analytics, Krystalytics, Tower Data, surveys, social media, etc. Want to know your customer’s age range, sexual preference or marital status?

Done.

All the demographic information you want is at your fingertips on the Internet.  Beyond demographics, there is market research.  Do you know how well your customer understands the marketplace? What Facebook groups are they in?  What is their brand awareness?  A more nuanced tier of questioning is important in getting a step closer to understanding your customer.

But if you really want to understand your customer, know them and predict their every desire you have to go further.  Could you write five pages of your customer’s diary? Could you write one page? If not, continue reading.

Very few companies have context and comments from people that they consider to be potential customers.  We’re not talking about assumptions, customer preferences, or broad categories of skimmed data. We are talking about their exact words.

Why does this matter?

Think about this:

You tell your doctor, “Hey, I feel a lot of tension in my shoulders.”

The doctor replies, “Oh, so you have a lot of tenderness in your shoulders?”

Of course, a doctor would never say that because he or she knows that people use specific words for a reason.  Words matter!

When you are trying to understand your customer’s pain points, you need to hear and mirror their language and context.  How do you find the words?  An Avatar!

The best, most underutilized tool to build a customer avatar is an informational interview. Seriously, it’s the greatest tool in the sales and marketing universe, maybe even life in general. Like Frank’s Red Hot Sauce- ‘…put that sh** on everything.’

The funny thing is, unlike the aftermath of hot sauce, informational interviews are painless! They are low cost and (the best part) they’re high value.

Once you have your customer’s own words, it’s easy to create a customer avatar.
Click here to find out how – and let’s find out what they really want!