Customer Profile: How to Find Your Audience

The key challenge for the product you’re selling is to make it stand out. This means: attracting the attention of potential buyers, communicating the value of the product or service, and driving sales. Without understanding the needs of your target audience, you won’t be able to achieve your goals or make your business thrive. Companies and individuals make purchasing decisions differently. It’s important to understand the nuances of behavior in the B2B and B2C segments. To do this, you need to create a customer profile. This profile provides insight into the differences in goals and motivations. This article compiles useful information on how to create a buyer persona for the B2C and B2B segments, complete with examples.

What Is a Customer Profile?

A customer profile is a composite representation of the average user (an individual or a company). It brings together the key qualities, personality traits, and behavioral characteristics of the target audience. In the case of the B2B segment, the analysis focuses on corporate decision-makers, as well as information about the organization and its activities.

See also: Modeling and Optimizing Business Processes at a Company

Why It’s Important to Know Your Customer Profile

A target audience profile is a strategically important component of any company’s success. An avatar helps you focus on key points and tailor your products and services, thereby increasing customer satisfaction. A key benefit is the effective allocation of resources, which can lead to lower advertising costs. By understanding your buyer persona, you can:

1. Set priorities. A customer avatar provides insight into who is interested in the product or service. Based on these interests, you can select priority areas for development.
2. Create useful products. To do this, you need to set a goal: to meet the needs and expectations of your audience.
3. Create personalized offers. By taking the target audience’s interests into account, you can develop effective marketing strategies and advertising campaigns that resonate with your audience.
4. Build a loyal customer base. If a product meets the needs of its target audience, the company can count on customer loyalty, repeat purchases, and word-of-mouth recommendations to friends, acquaintances, and colleagues.
5. Build long-term relationships. A customer profile helps a business understand exactly how a customer interacts with a product or service. By using this information, you can create conditions that encourage repeat purchases—and build long-term relationships.
6. Identify/find effective product promotion channels. A buyer persona provides insight into where target consumers prefer to spend their time and obtain information. Understanding buyer psychology helps in making the right decisions about strengthening existing marketing channels and finding new ones.

A well-defined buyer persona is key to a successful campaign launch on any platform. In the long run, this helps you focus on a unified business development strategy, enhance brand value, and increase profits.

Components of a Target Audience Profile

There is no universal list of data that needs to be collected about a customer. It depends on the business sector. The key task is to create the most accurate possible consumer profile, covering as many relevant characteristics as possible. These will differ for customers in the B2C and B2B segments.

See also: Sales Scripts: Benefits for Businesses

Customer Profile for the B2C Segment

The target consumer avatar for the B2C segment is a set of characteristics that describes a single person (a composite image). This person personally goes through the sales funnel, so it’s important to focus as much as possible on their needs.

In this case, the target audience profile includes the following required information:

1. Demographics. It is necessary to take into account the buyer’s gender, age, ethnicity, nationality, religious beliefs, and marital status (including family composition).
2. Geography. Place of residence, including specific details. For example, not just the country, but also climatic conditions, cultural characteristics, and local features. These details help us understand the specific environment in which a person lives.
3. Socioeconomic data. Information about education, social status, employment, and job title. Key details: responsibilities, whether or not the person has subordinates, salary level, relationships with coworkers and supervisors, attitude toward work, and career path.
4. Interests and Hobbies. What consumers prefer, where their interests lie, and what influences their decision-making. Factors that inspire buyers.
5. Psychotype. A description of a person’s tasks, goals, problems, emotions, habits, and thinking style.
6. Purchasing behavior. Motivations, key selection criteria, impulsiveness, susceptibility to objections, decision-making methods (including the influence of others), average transaction value, seasonality of sales, and consumer basket. The study also identifies the preferred method of shopping (in-person, online, by phone) and payment (credit card, cash, etc.).
7. Relationship with the brand’s product. Reasons why they like it, what needs improvement, how it helps solve unique problems, what questions arise before a purchase, and what causes the most concern (doubts about quality, delivery speed, the ability to exchange or return the product, etc.).
8. Ways of consuming information. Specific types of content, groups, and social media pages; the best browser, search engine, and mobile device; and convenient services for making purchases.

You can obtain the necessary information from various sources. Popular options include:

1. Surveys. You can launch them via social media, email newsletters, or embed them on a website (for example, Google Forms). The advantage of this method is that the services for collecting information are free, and creating the survey takes very little time. The key is to carefully consider the list of questions so that nothing is overlooked. Another advantage of this method is that it makes it easy to analyze the results later, since all the responses are collected in one place.
2. Social media community. By using your own account, you can find information about a popular product or a service you’re interested in.
3. Email newsletters. A survey consisting of a few short questions can help you gather valuable information. Many users will be willing to take it if it takes only 2–3 minutes to complete.
4. Page and website statistics. As a rule, this method can be used to obtain information about customer demographics (gender, age, place of residence).
5. Social media analysis. You can view information on partners’ accounts. Focus on personal details, interests, hobbies, and groups.
6. Call-tracking analysis. By tracking the sales department’s conversations with customers, you can gain a great deal of valuable insight into your target audience.
7. Personal experience and observations. By using the product that customers purchase, you can identify the problems other consumers face. At the same time, this experience allows you to identify unmet needs as well as the drawbacks and shortcomings of a specific product.

To quickly create a buyer persona, we recommend using specialized services. Free apps with templates (such as Xtensio or Digital Marketer) help you build a profile of your ideal buyer as quickly and effectively as possible. This should be based on data collected through surveys or online research.

Customer Profile for the B2B Segment

A B2B client profile consists of a sole proprietor or a company representative who makes decisions, as well as information about the organization and its activities. When creating a profile, keep in mind that decisions may be made collectively. This applies to companies with complex processes and a culture of negotiation. It is important to analyze all individuals who influence strategy and tactics and to work with the following data:

1. The position of the employee who makes the decision. This may be the business owner directly or individuals with the appropriate authority.
2. Business needs. These are divided into internal and external. The former relate to the company’s operations and development. For example, office organization, resource allocation, process optimization, staff training, and the implementation of technologies and innovations. External needs relate to the company’s interactions with partners, customers, suppliers, competitors, and the government.
3. Company size. Key aspect: whether operations are concentrated in a single location (office) or spread across the country or around the world.
4. Geographic scope. Operations within a city, region, country, or, specifically, abroad.
5. The company’s field of activity. Understanding the specifics of the industry makes it possible to identify its needs and key priorities for development.
6. Total number of employees. The challenges, needs, and priorities of small, medium, and large companies can vary dramatically.
7. The company’s sales volume and annual revenue. These figures provide insight into the company’s financial situation. This helps determine which products the organization needs and develop recommendations for optimization.

When creating a profile of a B2B client, it is important to use reliable sources of information. These include the following:

1. Data on existing customers. You can obtain this information from CRM systems, social media profiles, corporate websites, reviews, and comments. You can gather a lot of useful information by carefully analyzing the questions asked by business owners or company representatives when purchasing goods or ordering services.
2. Marketing Research. Surveys and interviews are an effective way to get feedback from customers and establish contact with potential clients. This helps you understand their needs, motivations, and challenges. Focus groups involving representatives of the target audience help improve the product by discussing its features, pros, and cons. Another reliable way to gather information is through competitor analysis.
3. Other sources. Analyzing the content that prospects read on the corporate blog, as well as consulting with sales department employees, can provide valuable insights about them. You can create a lead form with a list of questions, the answers to which will help refine their profile.

Successfully expanding your customer base involves attracting new potential buyers. However, not everyone is ready to make a purchase right away, particularly due to financial constraints. The best solution when there is insufficient available capital is an installment payment plan offered by a business that provides this service. eDilo.

Examples of a client profile

An example of a detailed description of the ideal customer will help you quickly understand what the final result of your work should look like. We’ve prepared options for both the B2C and B2B segments. When creating a customer avatar, use additional questions to gather more information about your target audience. This will allow you to accurately identify buyers’ motivations and needs and create the conditions to meet them.

An example of a target audience profile for the B2C segment

Target Audience Profile: An Example in Table Form.

Example of a client avatar for the B2B segment

Client Avatar: An Example in Table Form.

Conclusion

How well do you know the customers for whom you’re setting up advertising campaigns? If you’re not completely confident that you understand their needs, their motivations for buying, and their challenges, this is a significant gap in developing a cohesive marketing strategy. Creating a customer avatar helps you get to know your potential buyers better and gain a deeper understanding of your existing partners. Encourage them to make immediate purchases with eDilo. It’s a convenient installment payment service for businesses. We offer:

• transparent terms of cooperation;
• a convenient payment schedule;
• quick connection to the service;
• effective technical support.

Choose eDiloto keep growing, successfully expand your customer base, and increase your profits.

FAQ

What are the main differences in creating portraits for the B2B and B2C segments?

Companies and individuals make purchasing decisions differently. When creating buyer personas for the B2B and B2C segments, you need to work with different types of data. In the first case, you need to study the decision-makers within a company, including detailed information about the organization and its activities. In the second case, you need to focus on the goals, behavior, and motivations of an individual (a composite profile).

What mistakes should you avoid when creating a client profile?

Common mistakes when creating a customer avatar: providing a general description without specifics; creating multiple profiles for a single segment; and failing to take into account the people who influence purchasing decisions. A major mistake is failing to update target audience data.

Should we update and refine our target audience profiles over time?

The market, companies, and customers change over time. This trend makes it necessary to regularly update data on the target audience. This allows you to stay on top of trends and avoid sharp drops in sales.

What is a “negative” customer profile? Why is it important to identify it?

An anti-avatar, or non-target customer, is a negative portrayal of the target audience. Creating an exclusionary persona helps identify those for whom your product—whether a good or a service—is not suitable. Based on the data collected, it’s easiest to disqualify certain individuals from your list of leads, since they won’t become customers.