Welcome to the Friday edition. End of a busy week but welcoming the weekend, but a fair bit of work to do still.
I’m sure like a lot of people, in fact and if anyone has noticed, yes, my hair does need cutting and, yes, I’ll try to get it done on the weekend.
But today I want to talk about your customers again. Who are your customers? Do you know? And by that what I mean is who is your typical customer?
In the system we teach at Marketing For Owners we have four areas, and the first one is we start with Possibles.
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If that person you are marketing to is not a possible customer, you’re wasting your time.
That’s one of the biggest ways that people go wrong is to advertise to everybody, or not advertising in the place where the typical customer hangs out.
So who are they? How do you know?
And the best way to do this is to create a persona to describe the persona (and some people called it an avatar, like that movie but not blue people) but how would you describe that perfect customer?
Now, write down their age group, are they male or female, are they married, are they single, do they have kids, what kind of car do they drive?
The more you can figure out about your customer, the more you get to know them, the more you be able to talk to them and the more you be able to imagine them as a real person.
For most of us, like in my business, we have a number of niches that we cover. So you can’t say there’s one typical customer, Bob, who’s 58.
There’s a lot of female demographics that we deal with and there’s a lot of younger people and there’s a lot of older people but you have to start somewhere.
How to Make a Customer Persona
So, using your experience, perhaps survey your customers, or perhaps you already know all about them. Let’s try and describe that person. Now, let’s say her name is Jill.
Say for example, she is 41. Jill is married, her husband’s name is Bob. Bob has a job as an architect and Jill has a part time job. The two kids, a boy and a girl, Georgina and Bill, are whatever age.
They go to the local school. Jill picks them up, they go by bus, they go by train. And, in between time she goes shopping and, because she goes shopping, her time is limited, she has hours of between x and x.
See, you can start to draw down and get to know a real person and then you can match your product to that exact person. Even better, give them a picture.
Go to Google images or something like that, pick a photo (just for internal purposes), pick a name. Give them a whole personality.
Decide where they go on holiday. Pick standard stuff. Say what car they drive. Really get to know them. Be able to describe them. And then when you’re writing material for marketing, talk to that person, talk to your avatar.
Weekend Challenge
So, I’m going to give you a challenge, a Weekend Challenge.
#1 Think About Your Customers
I want you to think about, think about your customers, think about who is the most typical and see if you can do this.
#2 Write Everything Down
Write down a list, write down as much as you could possibly know. Of course, you’re making some of this up, but you’re using your best judgment.
Come out with a full explanation.
#3 Read it Again on Monday
On Monday, read it again and see if it describes your customer, that is your challenge for the weekend.
Simple as that, it won’t take long once you get into it. You’ll be surprised what it can do.
It really will improve your marketing.
Now, a final shout out for this month’s sponsors RainMaker. Go to bit.ly/mfo-rain.
Rainmaker is a fully hosted, fully serviced everything website. All you will ever need. There are many designs as you will see. Go look at the site, it’s fantastic.
For disclosure, our website runs on RainMaker. We wouldn’t have it any other way.
Okay, that’s it, a week over. Enjoy your weekend, don’t work too hard, spent time with your family. I will see you next Monday.