Not knowing your customers could leave you scratching your head and with little return for your marketing dollars.
The profitability of your business depends on how well you know your customers. But if you assume that customer needs are the same as they were five years ago, you could be putting your business’s bottom line in serious jeopardy. So how can you figure out who you’re dealing with, and most importantly, what makes them tick?
Customer needs are influenced by myriad forces – from aggressively competitive pricing to technical advances in the digital space. Profiling is a process of discovery – a great way to get inside the heads and hearts of your existing clients. The insights you gain will also help you acquire more like-type customers.
Profiling is essentially reconnecting with your buyers. Results will influence your marketing approach, including buying data, your contact strategy and deciding on the most appropriate marketing channels. Before undertaking any marketing activity, it’s important to make sure that the profile of your actual customer fits with your vision of your target audience? If you’re not sure who you’re talking to, or you’re out of touch with your customers’ needs, you could be heading for campaign disaster.
The best profiling uses sophisticated toolsets to compare your customers to standardised commercial data sets. The results show how your customers compare to the overall population in each specific demographic or by other attribute. By grouping customers with similar demographic/purchase/behaviour patterns together, ‘clusters’ are formed. Whether your targets are consumers or businesses, by comparing your customer profiles to standardised, statistically stable clusters, you can identify the clusters more likely to need or want your products/services.
Consumer customer profiles usually include:
- Demographics – including age, income, gender, occupation, home ownership and family status.
- Geodemographics – including information on interests, lifestyles, purchasing behaviour and attitudes.
- Survey data – based on data available for purchase or gathered through self-reported information.
Business customer profiles usually include:
- SICs or ANZSICs – Standard Industry Classification (SIC) and Australian New Zealand Standard Industry Classification (ANZSIC) are used to determine type of business.
- Firmographics – includes number of employees, revenue, year of establishment and head office indicator.
By identifying and understanding customers in the clusters where your product/service will have the highest penetration, you can target your marketing efforts with offers that will appeal to them specifically, improving response rates and ROI.
Guesswork is a gamble. Protect your profits with the best profilers in the business. Call Prime Prospects on 03 9415 8500 today to discuss your next campaign.