How to define your ideal customer?

When starting your business, one of the first items to determine in your business plan is defining your prospective customers and buying process. Defining your ideal customer is vital for all businesses to understand in order for your business to succeed. The ability to determine who your customer is and then sell your product or service to that customer should be the foundation for all businesses. Below are a few items to consider when determine your business’s ideal customer.

1. Defining Product or Service
2. Demographics
3. Psychographics
4. Buying Process

Defining Your Product or Service

First, and most importantly, start off with asking yourself a few questions.

- What are you selling to your customers?
- Will your product or service take care of the customer’s problem?
- How will the product or service improve a customer’s lifestyle or life?
- Is this product or service comparably priced in the marketplace?
- What is different about your product or service compared to your competition?

By asking yourself these questions, it will help to determine what your product or service is as well as what type of customers that will purchase your product or service and how to differentiate it in the marketplace.

Customer Demographics

Next, what are customer demographics and how well do you know your customer demographics? Customer demographics are segments of the population often broken down by age, location, income levels, gender, etc. When you think of your product or service, what type of person do you envision purchasing your business’s product or service? If you are selling cosmetics, you could say that some of your customer demographics could be that you are selling to mostly women, ages 15-65+, nationwide, etc. Below are some questions to ask yourself in defining your customer demographics:

- What is your customer’s age?
- Are you selling to men, women or both?
- What is your customer’s income level?
- Are they homeowners, parents, business owners, college students?
- Are they located in the United States, worldwide or within a specific state or county?

These demographics define what your customer looks like so that you can then craft compelling content and advertising to the right customer base.

Customer Psychographics

Now that you have your customer demographics defined, you should review your customer psychographics. Psychographics are the lifestyles, values, attitudes, activities, interests and opinions that would lead your customer to purchasing your product or service. Below are a few questions to consider when defining your customers psychographics:

- How well do you know your customers personalities?
- Do you know what type of lifestyle your customer lives?
- What are some interests that your customer may have?
- What are some opinions, values and beliefs that your customer may have?

Understanding your customers psychographics will help you strategically market to customers more efficiently and effectively.

Customer Buying Process

After you defined your product or service, your customer demographics and psychographics, you need to review the process in which your customer will go through before they actually purchase your product or service. Below are a few stages a customer will go through during the buying process:

1. Recognize they have a problem
2. Research, collection of information
3. Evaluate options – price shop, comparison
4. Purchase
5. After-purchase evaluation

Understanding how the customer buying process will allow you to align your sales strategy around each phase the customer goes through.

Defining your customer is more than a simple process, it requires time and consideration. However, defining your customer will allow you to effectively market to your business’s specific customer, not to the masses. When you narrow down your focus, you will see more positive sales growth and customer retention. For more information or questions regarding the information, feel free to contact LionHeart Marketing.