This post was written by Jayne Kendall, Product Marketing Manager for www.ourhomeonline.wales – powered by Nominet who also run www.theukdomain.uk

When thrown together with the ‘To Do’ list of new start-ups customer profiling can often be overlooked, when in fact it should be one of the first things new businesses do. It’s a fundamental part of marketing and essentially helps to create a portrait of your ideal customer who wants to buy your product or service. Here’s how to get started…

Why do I need a customer profile?

The short answer is you’ll gain an understanding of who your customers are through customer profiling which will no doubt prove invaluable when it comes to making business decisions. For example, how else would you know what targeting to choose when advertising? And how could you make campaign decisions if you’re not sure whether you’re talking to 18 year olds or 45 year olds? Not to mention customers expect a highly personalised experience from brands, now more than ever.

Your customer profile(s) will help you create new products, tailor marketing campaigns and allow you to offer some great customer service, to name a few. And, thanks to the detail you can now gleam from online analytical tools, it’s easier than ever to create and keep your customer profiles updated.

What do I need to include?

If you can, conducting a brainstorming session with everyone in your business is a great place to start creating your customer profile(s). Make sure you take advantage of any customer insight you already have, perhaps if your website is already live, or you’ve got research from recent industry reports. Here’s the main areas you’ll need to think about:

Demographics: The basics of who engages with your business and buys your product or service. Consider:

Age

Gender

Income and employment status

Location

Education

Living arrangements

Of course, not every customer will fit completely with your profile, so don’t be afraid to create a range within these profiling factors or even more than one profile for your customers.

Psychographics and Behaviour: The characteristics and behaviour of your customers, considering why they buy from you. Think about:

Hobbies

Interests

Lifestyle choices

Likes and dislikes

Also, think about where your customers frequently visit and the places they’re attracted too, both online and offline, such as the gym or Twitter. Brainstorm what your customers are looking at online and what they’re typing into search engines, a key area as the internet evolves.

Purchasing Process: Understanding how your customers purchase your products or services is a fundamental part of your business, but how do they get there? It’s important you think about how potential customers are finding you based on the factors we covered above, for example is a younger audience using Google to find your business? An area of this is whether you think your customers will want to read reviews on your product or testimonials on your services, after all 84% of people trust online reviews as much as a personal recommendation.

B2B businesses also need to think about customer profiling and the above areas can be adapted to suit different business models. Think about the location of your customer’s offices, how many employees they have, the process they use to make decisions, revenue and potential budget.

What do I do next?

The most important answer to this is to make sure you use your customer profile(s) to help make marketing decisions so your business is offering relevant and engaging advertising, content and products. You can also use your profile(s) to focus on relevant keywords in your SEO practices so you’ll have a better chance of getting your business in front of an interested audience.

Your customer profile(s) will change over time as your business evolves and grows, so they’ll need to be reviewed and updated regularly. After all, you’ll be sure to gain some new insight too. Take advantage of some of the great analytical tools out there to find insights into your online customers, for example Google Analytics will tell you their age, gender and location to name a few. By connecting with your current customers you’ll not only gain feedback on your products but you’ll gather some insight into them too, perhaps they all found your business a similar way or you can get some ideas on why they choose to buy from you.

And you can see from this introduction, customer profiling is definitely an exercise worth the effort. You’ll gain a better understanding of who your customers are which will be invaluable when it comes to making informed decisions, so make sure you’re implementing it across your business to get the most out of your efforts to grow.