Growth Mapping using Customer Profiling
In this post we will show you how to define part of your Customer Profile. Included in the post you can find;
There’s a universally accepted idea that if you understand your customer better, your marketing will be better as a result. That’s why we’ve dedicated the second part of our nine-part Growth Mapping framework to creating a peerless Customer Profile.
Through a series of interactive exercises, our growth experts help you develop a persona for your ideal customer, taking into account things like key demographics, personality traits, professional challenges, and common user behaviours.
Armed with this info, we then piece together a lookalike of your target customer; one you can evolve as you learn more about the way your audience interacts with – and buys from – your business. And in this post, we’re giving you a sneak peek into one of those exercises.Here, you’ll learn:
Why understanding your customer is crucial;
How to profile your perfect customer;
And how doing so will help you target your messaging with laser-guided focus.
Plus, at the bottom of the page, you’ll find a free worksheet download to help you get to grips with your customer’s needs, wants, and pain points.
Ready? Let’s go.
Why does profiling your customer matter?
Knowing your customer (really knowing them) can be the linchpin for your most important business activities. If you understand what they want and how they want to get it, you can tailor your approach to sales and marketing to satisfy their needs.
But it’s often not enough to simply zero in on customer age range, gender, job roles, or income bands. Sometimes you need to go deeper to understand them better.
Determining their hobbies, interests, tastes, and online/offline behaviours can give you a competitive edge as you seek to make meaningful connections — and the following exercise can help you find the answers.
Exercise: profile your audience with the customer wheel
Customer Profiling Wheel
This thought-provoking exercise has been designed to breathe life into your customer personas and, ultimately, improve your marketing by making it more relevant and engaging.
In the above graphic, you’ll see we’ve split a circle into eight wedges. Each one considers different criteria as we seek to profile your ideal customer. Starting with the “Job Role”, we work our way around the wheel anticlockwise, adding notes to highlight who we’re targeting, how we’re targeting them, and why.
In the example below, our ideal customer is a business owner, Managing Director, or CEO. In other words, the person responsible for the business.
We’ve also picked an age range of 35-54 and then narrowed that down further into 35-44 and 45-54, as these distinct age groups may have different short and long-term goals.
To round off the demographics section of the wheel, we’ve selected a 60/40 split male to female customer base.
Now that we have an idea of the audience we’re hoping to attract (majority male business owners, 35-44), the next wedge of the wheel helps us figure out how they might find you.
To do this, we use the AIDA framework (attention, interest, desire, action). Following each step of the framework within this wedge, we pinpoint the channels your ideal customer might use to discover you (Google, pay-per-click ads, LinkedIn, directories, etc.) and the pages on your website they might visit to better understand your offering, like a service page, for example.
Working our way towards the outside of the wedge, we then think about ways to pique their interest and turn it into desire. For instance, content like guides, e-books, or case studies can work to establish your expertise and credibility.
And following on from this, we think about the action they might take to become a lead. For example, they could complete an enquiry form or fill out an online tool related to your industry, like a savings calculator, in exchange for their details.
Next, the Gains and Pains wedges essentially look at what someone will gain from using your product or service (less stress or cost savings, for example) and the pain points they’re currently facing (e.g., using a time-consuming alternative or lack of in-house resources).
These penultimate pieces of the customer profile wheel help us understand your ideal customer’s motivations for reaching out and engaging with you — and how you can tailor your message to resonate with them.
Finally, the last wedge helps you think about your customer’s daily routine. What does a typical morning, afternoon, and evening look like for them? And on which devices do they spend the bulk of their time at each point of the day?
If you know they’re on their smartphone during a morning commute, their desktop morning into the afternoon, and back on their smartphone in the evening, you can refine your targeting and improve your chances of catching their eye.
Key Takeaway: As we work our way around the wheel, this profiling exercise helps you build a more robust, actionable version of your ideal customer. And by defining your customer profile, you’re armed with an understanding of their behaviours, motivations, and challenges, helping you improve your targeting, messaging, content creation, sales process, and so much more.
Head over to our Resources Area to access the Profiling Workbook, and discover a whole range of resources to implement in your business. Or, if you’re ahead of the game, book a call in with our Growth Experts.
Try the Growth Mapper today
We’ve designed each section of our Growth Mapper process around a critical part of your business growth. We start with the basics and drill down into the details, giving you a clear picture of the opportunities and challenges moving forward.
