How do you convince your target market that they need what your business has to offer? By truly understanding what they want and need – and delivering it at precisely the right time. This takes deep empathy and research into the mind of your ideal customers.

In this article we will take you through a few techniques and tools you can use to help you paint the picture of who your ideal customer is so you can serve them better.

Understanding Your Customers

• Customer Personas
• Value PropositionA clear statement that explains how a product or service solves a problem, delivers benefits, and distinguishes itself f Canvas
• Customer Buying Journey

 

Buyer Personas

 

What it is & Why You Need It:

• Knowing your customer is the most important part of any business. Buyer personas are crucial to defining the type of customers you are trying to reachThe total number of unique users who see your content, ad, or campaign, often used as a metric to measure brand visibili. It’s not enough to simply attract people to your business: You want to attract the right people.

How to Develop it:

We can find some valuable data from existing resources. These list of resources should give you enough insight into who your customers are + where you should be speaking to them + what kind of problems they are facing.

If you already had an active social media presence

• Facebook Page Insights: If you have a Facebook page make use of the analyticsThe collection, analysis, and reporting of data to measure the performance of websites, social media accounts, and marke data provided in the insights section [fb.com/pageusername/insights] . This is a free resource.
• Twitter AnalyticsThe collection, analysis, and reporting of data to measure the performance of websites, social media accounts, and marke: Login to your twitter page then open a new tab and head to [analyticsThe collection, analysis, and reporting of data to measure the performance of websites, social media accounts, and marke.twitter.com]. This is also a free resource.

You had a website but no social media presence

• Google AnalyticsA powerful tool for tracking and analyzing website traffic, user behavior, and campaign performance to optimize digital: Take a look at your website visitors and their behaviors on your site at [analyticsThe collection, analysis, and reporting of data to measure the performance of websites, social media accounts, and marke.google.com]. This is a free resource.

If you had no website or social media presence

• Sales Data & Customer Surveys: Customer insights can be found within your sales team as you dig into sales data and responses from customer surveys done on the ground.
• Industry Reports & Trends: Browse through your respective industry reports to spot trends in customer demographics & behavior.

Now that you know where to look, here are list of things you should look out for as you browse through the numbers:

• Sex & Age: Pay attention to the age and sex of the audience across these different points of reference. What demographic is the majority of your fanbase?
• Interests: What catches their attention the most? What do find intriguing in their daily lives that could connect with your brand.
• Pain Points: What problems and issues do your customers face that you can focus on providing a solution for through content?
• Brand Engagement & Sentiment: Pay attention to how people engage with your product/service and comments they make when giving feedback to see customer sentiment.
• Purchasing Behavior: Based off sales data and industry trends you should be able to identify which customer segment currently spends the most with your brand and future expectations.
• Location: Where does your target market currently go for content to solve the pain points mentioned? Examine competitor pages as well to get inspiration for content.

Next Steps:

Compile information and create a Target PersonaA detailed profile of a brand’s ideal customer, including their demographics, needs, preferences, and behaviors, used Profile, showing the following info

• Name | Job | Interests | Pains | Technology use

Example:

Value Proposition Canvas

 

What it is & Why You Need It:

The Value PropositionA clear statement that explains how a product or service solves a problem, delivers benefits, and distinguishes itself f Canvas is a plug of the Business Model Canvas. This will help you to project, test and build your Unique Value PropositionA clear statement that explains how a product or service solves a problem, delivers benefits, and distinguishes itself f for your customers in a more structured and reflective way. The value propositionA clear statement that explains how a product or service solves a problem, delivers benefits, and distinguishes itself f canvas is a simple way to understand your customers needs, and design products and services they want.

How to Develop it

Customer Segment

• Jobs: In the box ‘Customer Jobs’ you describe what customers are trying to solve and the tasks they are trying to perform or complete in their work and lives when dealing with a problem.
• Pains: In the box ‘Customer Pains’ you gather all the negative emotions and undesired costs, situations and risk which your customer could experience before, during and after doing their jobs.
• Gains: In the box ‘Customer Gains’ you gather all the customer’s benefits and desires to describe the outcomes customers want to achieve or concrete benefits they want to see. For example, this box could include positive emotions, functional requirements, or specific cost savings.

Value Proposition

• Products & Services: In the box ‘Product & Services’ you list all the products and services which your value propositionA clear statement that explains how a product or service solves a problem, delivers benefits, and distinguishes itself f is built around. This includes for example the services that you offer or the help the customer receives either a functional, social, or emotional.
• Pain Relievers: In the box ‘Pain Relievers’ you describe how your products addresses the challenges needs and the pains of the customer, how you eliminate negative emotions, undesired costs or avoidable situations.
• Gain Creators: In the box ‘Gain Creators’ you describe how your product creates customer gain, how it offers an added value to your customer.

Customer Fit: You achieve customer fit when your products & services, pain relievers and gain creators match one or more of the jobs, pains and gains that are important to your customers.

 

Example

Buyer Journey

 

What is The Buyer’s Journey?:

As Modern marketers we have now learned that the purchase process is a journey that consumers slowly go through; a process the marketing industry has dubbed ‘the buyer’s journey.’ The buyer’s journey is a frameworkA structured approach or methodology used to design and implement digital marketing strategies efficiently and effective that acknowledges a buyer’s progression through an awareness and evaluation process ultimately culminating in a purchase.

How To Map Buyer’s Journey With Content:

The journey is a three-step process detailed here:

Awareness:

This is when the buyer recognizes they have an issue or pain point that needs to be solved and they begin to search for a solution. At this stage you should give consumers thought leadership and entertainment based content to build brand awarenessThe degree to which consumers recognize and remember your brand, often measured by how well they can associate your logo such as:

• Blog Posts
• Slides
• Infographics
• Videos

Consideration:

This is when the buyer explores different solutions and hones in on the one that they feel best solves their pain point. AT this stage your customers want tools and resources to help them evaluate the solution they are looking for such as:

• Ebooks
• Webinars
• Case Studies
• How-To Guides
• Calculators
• Quizzes

Decision:

During this phase, the buyer examines the solution they’ve identified and tries to justify a purchase decision. If all goes well, they end up making the selection. At this point your customers want to see company-specific information to help them evaluate and re-affirm the selection they are making, this includes:

• Service Information
• Contact Information
• CTA’s
• Testimonials / Reviews

Understanding the buyer’s journey helps you to tailor your marketing strategy to each stage of the journey so your potential customers can find your solution.

Conclusion

The importance of constantly studying your customers cannot be overstated.

Understanding Your Customers:

• Customer Personas
• Value PropositionA clear statement that explains how a product or service solves a problem, delivers benefits, and distinguishes itself f Canvas
• Customer Buying Journey