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It is so important to view the world through your customer's eyes - an in-depth understanding of your customer will influence every aspect of your business - ensuring your products/services are seen as more appealing by your market when compared to your competition.

So, who is your customer? Sounds a simple question to answer, but understanding your customer effectively extends to much more than just 'male, 25 -35, earns over $50K'.

How to Understand your Customer

The best way to gain an in-depth understanding of your customer and what influences their buying choices and habits, is to build up a comprehensive 'profile' of the various groups your typical customer fits into.

....so what information do you need?

Well putting it simply, you need to know everything that influences your customers' buying habits and their decision making processes!

But don't worry, it's not actually that hard and the benefits will really help you improve your business and enable you to:

• Find out what marketing works and what doesn't
• Select marketing tactics that are cost effective
• Select who to target and who to avoid!
• Understand what to tell your customers
• Understand what they want to hear 
• Understand what it is they value, what they will pay for and how much they will pay for it
• Identify when andhow you communicate with your customers
• Identifywhen customers are thinking about buying
• Identifywhen they are likely to buy
• Identify where you can reach your customers
• Identify why they would buy from you

10 Key advantages to understanding your customer

A detailed understanding of your customer enables you to learn more about: who they are, what they do, why they buy, why they don't buy, what's important to them, and how they perceive your products/services.

Although it may take some time and effort to gather and collate this information, the end result will help you identify what you need to do to get more customers to buy from you and not your competition.

It will also:

1.       Maximise the return on your marketingby ensuring you communicate the right message to the right people, using the right incentive, at the right time in the right place! 

2.       Identify those aspects of your products/services that are important to your customerand help you highlight them in the right way to generate sales.

3.       Help you identify and select the most effective media to communicate your message. Used correctly, it will also assist you in selecting the right distribution and service channels for your products/services.

4.       Help you identify and prioritise your customers based on their value and profitability. Translation: it will make sure you are putting your resources into selling to higher value customers rather than low value ones.