Knowing Your Ideal Customer
Ask yourself who truly appreciates what you have to offer, what type of customers are currently buying from you?
The life blood of any business is its customers. It is really important for any business to know and understand its customers.
That is why successful companies do a lot of research into who buys their products. Competition is fierce, it is easy to get left behind. If a business defines a very specific customer base it makes it much easier for it to anticipate and respond to future trends and understand what to sell.
Feet on the street, attract your ideal customers
Obviously, a small retail business isn’t going to be able to put the same kind of resources into customer research as its bigger rivals, time and financial constraints are bound to be a consideration. However, all retailers, no matter their size, always need to know why their customers choose to shop with them and it doesn’t need to be a complicated process to find out the reasons why.
Digging down into exactly why your customers like you, can make you view your business in a completely new light. It is always going to be difficult for smaller businesses to compete on price but that is often not the defining factor in customer choice. It’s much more complex than that. Expert knowledge, great customer service and the personal touch are all things that a small business can offer that larger companies can’t. It’s all about the customer experience.
Understanding your customers is the key to a successful business. Finding out what motivates them to shop with you may make you see things in a different light and give you an insight into the real strengths of your business.
The Style Room, Bingham working on their ideal customer profile
A really useful exercise that you can try is to draw up an ideal customer profile.
To create an ideal customer profile all you need to do is to think about who your best customers are in terms of how often they shop with you, their average spend, are they a raving fan and always recommending you and sending friends your way. Think about what sort of person they are and jot down some information about them. The more details you put in the better. Start with the basics like age, sex and where they live. You can then expand it out as far as you like to include such things as social media habits, what they like to do in their leisure time, favourite TV shows etc.
Soon a fairly comprehensive picture will emerge. You can even give the ideal customer a name. By creating a profile you will start to see your business through their eyes and gain an understanding of what it is about your shop that they really like.
Give your ideal customer a name
You don’t need to stop at one profile. When you really start to think about your customers, you might well realise that you have 3 or 4 different types you need to appeal to. These people will all have different shopping habits and are likely to have very different lifestyles too. We have identified 4 ideal customers within our own business and we tailor our marketing to ‘speak’ to each group to keep the information and advice relevant.
Our easy to follow workbook can be printed off and written in or used digitally on your iPad or tablet.
Once you have drawn up your profiles, you can use them in a number of ways. You can use social media tools to directly target likely customers who fit within the criteria or demographics. You can reposition your business to concentrate on its strengths and discard those elements that weigh it down. You can rearrange your shop’s layout to make it as attractive as possible to your ideal customer.
Creating an Ideal Customer Profile is one of the ways to help you find new customers and increase the spend of your best customers. Keeping your finger on the pulse and concentrating on what you do best will help you build lasting relationships with your most valuable customers and will give you the means and confidence to sustain and grow your business.
If you really want to do a deep dive into who your ideal customer is, we have a step-by-step workbook in our website shop. Our easy to follow workbook can be printed off and written in or used digitally on your iPad or tablet. For just the price of a cup of coffee, this workbook is your key to unlocking the full potential of your business by understanding who your customers are and what they need and want from you. It's the perfect support resource for retailers like you!
Ideal Customer Workbook can be printed off and written in or used on your ipad or tablet.
We’d love to see how you tweak your marketing and social media once you define your ideal customer so tag us in your posts, @thehighstreetexperts
