Who is the customer

Customer is King!

Marketing is an exchange process, so if you want your customer to give your their time and money, you need to give them something they will value

Meet thier needs

That means planning your product and messaging around what they really need and the language they actually use

Customer analysis will simplify your marketing and product decisions

Be Customer focussed

At the heart of your marketing strategy is the customer. This is the entity that benefits from the work that you do. They have a problem that needs to be solved or a goal that needs to be reached and will seek mechanisms to achieve this goal. The size of the benefit will define how actively they search and how much value they place on the solution.

Understanding is key

Your marketing objective will be to influence this entity to act in a certain way, so you need to understand how they benefit and how they search for a solution if you are to craft an effective marketing communications strategy.

decision makers

In a business to business context, there may be different decision-makers, such as accountants, Boards etc, and these may have different requirements and it can be important to influence these decision makers. However, it is important to focus on the person or role that benefits at this stage as they will be the active buyer and will lead any search activities.

How customer understanding can improve your business

Understanding your customer will help you tailor your proposition, channels and communications specifically to their needs. This lets you maximise your value proposition and focus your communications and channelsUnderstanding your customer will help you tailor your proposition, channels and communications specifically to their needs. This lets you maximise your value proposition and focus your communications and channels

Buyer persona

A buyer persona describes who your customer is by personalising your “ideal Customer”. This is will become your touchstone when you make decisions, and forces you to see things

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Customer needs and Pain points

Customers all have problems they need to solve, with the size of the problem dictating how motivated they are to solve it, and how valuable a solution is to them. Low pain problems are not likely to be high on their list of priorities and will be difficult to sell. Your proposition should be designed to solve the high pain problems.

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What language do they use?

You need to know what language your customers use if you want to connect with them, and this is particularly true for Online sales and marketing. Google won’t translate your technical jargon into words your customers can understand, so you need to ensure you know what questions they are asking if you want them to recognise that you have the answer.

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Where are they looking for answers?

If your customer is active on Facebook, then there is little point having a strong Tik Tok presence! Similarly, understanding how they want to receive information is key to presenting it in a way that will be easy to receive and engage with.

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What sort of relationship is relevant?

Some products and services lend themselves to subscriptions and long term supplier relationships whilst some are more transactional in nature. Understanding which is most relevant to the problem at hand, and to the type of customer will lead to products more suited to the market and application and simplify the decision making process for your customer.

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Example

In my case, the customer is a small business owner who is either in the start-up phase or whose business is not growing quickly enough or has stalled. I am not looking to speak to large companies, their needs are different and they have the ability to bring skills into the business. They are local, they are likely to be marketing a service or relatively complex product and probably don't come from a marketing background. They are motivated but, being entrepreneurs, their first instinct is to do the work themselves, only going to external service providers once they have run out of ideas or most likely resources and knowledge. They are independent and have personal objectives which drive the business as much as the normal financial objectives

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