Client profiles are a great way to look at important information about your best customers, and they can help you to target your marketing messages more effectively to the right people to generate leads for less.
But in order to create the strongest messages that will resonate best with your ideal customers, it’s important to divide your customer base into segments, based on things like location, specific need, demographics, profession, and other important factors that make your individual clients unique.
Learning how to build the ideal customer profile (worksheet here) will help you determine the best people to buy your products or services, but segmenting those profiles will help you to craft the most relevant and personalized messages, allowing you to generate qualified leads with less effort.
Understanding Customer Profile Segmentation
Once you’ve finished gathering all the information you need to create your customer profiles, you may start to notice that certain patterns begin to emerge.
For instance, maybe you have a number of clients that live in the same city or same neighborhood, or perhaps many of your customers share the same hobby or interest.
Depending on how large your offering is (for example, do you target just a niche or local market, or do you appeal to people on a wider scale), you may realize there’s more than one group of people who buy your products or services.
If that is the case, then it’s important to segment these groups so you can craft customized marketing messages based on those common factors.
Imagine, for example, that a large number of your customers share a love of skydiving, then you might want to create a special marketing campaign that incorporates that passion.
As a real-world example, let’s take a look at Apple.
When the company was first starting out, their only customers were, for the most part, the early adopters who were highly enthusiastic about technology.
But as the company grew and their products gained momentum, the general public started getting on board as well, and many of these people didn’t have the same passion for tech as the company’s previous customer base.
At that point, the company began segmenting so they could better appeal to these new markets, and today they have multiple segments based on things like location, high-end versus low-end tech, smartphone users versus iPod lovers, and more.
Possibilities for Segmentation
There’s any number of ways you can break your customer base down into segments, and one of the most common is geography.
However, segmenting goes much deeper than that, and sometimes you can get creative with how you divide your markets, as long as the patterns are there to back it up.
For instance, maybe you don’t have customers that fit into a neat demographic segment, but perhaps a large portion of them just happen to drive past your place of business every day on their way to work.
Other segment possibilities include:
- Hobbies and interests
- Demographics
- Needs
- Purchase history
- Psychographics
- Customer lifetime value
- Overall profitability
- Benefits they need from you
Ways to Gather Information About Your Customers
One of the first things people discover when they’re learning how to create a customer avatar is that the hardest part of the task can be the information gathering.
In other words, where can you go to find out relevant data about your best customers that you can use to create profiles and segments?
One of the best places is right from the horse’s mouth: ask your customers directly.
You can do this through surveys, conversations, and informal chats, and while you want to gather as much data as possible, be sure to also focus on the specific value your products or services bring to their lives.
You can also check internal documents, go over customer records, and talk to your salespeople, who are on the ground floor interacting with your customers every day.
Narrowing in on Segments that Are Worthwhile
Before you start segmenting, it’s important to evaluate whether any given group is large enough to market to specifically, because otherwise, you may put too much time into targeting small groups that don’t provide enough return.
For instance, you may see a pattern that some of your customers are single fathers, but if they don’t form a large enough group, then focusing on that segment won’t be worth your time.
Once you’ve gathered enough information about your customers and examined the different segmentation possibilities, assess what groups will bring you the most value and base your segments on that.
However, that’s not to say that you should ignore the single fathers, but rather try to include them in a larger segment.
For instance, maybe half your customers are busy working professionals who are also parents, and you can include the single fathers in that segment rather than creating a separate group for them.
A note about segmentation overlap: People don’t fit into neat little boxes, and just because a person fits into one segment doesn’t mean they don’t also belong in another, like the single dad who’s also a working professional.
It’s important to be aware of this because when you’re crafting your messages, you want to be cognizant of the overlap. Otherwise, you may alienate people.
Using Segments to Generate Leads
After you determine what your profitable segments are, it’s time to use them to your advantage. Start with the segment that offers the highest return on investment, and create specific campaigns using the information that makes that group special.
This includes targeted marketing messages, customize promotional offers, special discounts, offering other benefits that will resonate with that group, and creating a special value proposition for that segment.
For example, if you’re a dentist office targeting working professionals with kids, you might want to emphasize your children’s play area and offer free child-minding while mom or dad gets their teeth cleaned.
Don’t be afraid to experiment and test different offers and messages to see what works.
How to get ideal customers and more leads for less is all about using targeted marketing techniques to locate and engage the right people with the right messages.
Avatars and segmentation can help you achieve that because these tools will help you truly understand your best customers, and help you communicate your value propositions.
If you want to get started with your own avatars and marketing segments, download your ideal customer profile worksheet today.
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