Bringing the customer’s voice to the forefront
Define initial customer
Defining your customer begins with understanding the person you’re trying to reach. But to do that effectively, you have to ask the right questions. This article will help you do just that. The first thing to know is that there’s no one–size–fits–all approach. Each of your customer personas will have different needs, frustrations, interests and challenges. To create a customer persona that accurately reflects your audience, you need to know as much as possible about them. What is a customer persona? Before you dive into your customer persona research, you may want to brush up on what a customer persona is. Customer personas are fictional representations of your ideal customer. They include demographics like age, gender, ethnicity, marital status and location, as well as psychographics like interests and personality traits. They are used to help you figure out who your target customers are, what they want (and don’t want), what inspires them to take action, how they make decisions and what you can do to motivate them. According to MarketingSherpa, “customer personas are meant to be as accurate as possible, but they are not intended to be perfect representations.” You’re creating a persona for your ideal customer, not every customer.
Identify your “best” customers. Identify your “worst” customers. Determine the characteristics of the “best” customers and the “worst” customers. Define the value the “best” customers create for your business and how to retain them. Define the value the “worst” customers create for your business and how to get rid of them. In my experience, step 2 is the most difficult. The problem is that the very best and the very worst customers are usually called at the same time and are usually the same person. In addition, the process of identifying the “best” customers can become a soul–sucking exercise in frustration. You might think you’ve identified the best customers in your business, only to get a call from a customer who proves you wrong. This is when you need to take a step back and define what it means to be a “best” customer. In many cases, “best” customers are not customers who spend the most money, but the customers who spend the most money on the highest margin products or services. Identifying the best customers will be a process of trial and error, but in the end, you will be able to identify the customers who are most valuable to your business.
