Dec 2014 | Customer intelligence | Marketing Solutions | Prospecting customers | Segmentation

Knowing your customers is the crucial first step

In order to market accurately and efficiently a brand needs to understand who its customers are.

As all marketers know, customer experience is crucial in the modern consumer-centric marketplace. If you don’t know who your customers are how can you possible provide a relevant and painless experience? Remember modern Consumers are more savvy, more connected and more demanding than ever before. They expect a seamless experience of brands, regardless of channels.

Knowing your customers is the crucial first step towards tailoring your marketing to the customer. To deliver a personalised and relevant experience you need to know what makes your audience tick.

The benefits of understanding your audience:

  • Define audiences – If a brand has a solid understanding of its audience it can clearly define who its best customers are, who its least valuable customers are and where opportunities may lie.
  • Understand – A brand that understands its audience and is profiling its customers is capable of tailoring its offerings to suit those customers. This includes the ability to personalise communications and marketing across all channels to make them more relevant to the people receiving them.
  • Recognise – Consumer-centric engagement  – Knowing your customers allows a brand to recognise customers and make them feel valued. This improves the customer’s experience, their loyalty and the long-term value of that customer to the brand.
  • Efficient and effective advertising – A good appreciation of audience provides the potential for more effective and efficient advertising through the above mentioned personalisation and understanding – driving higher response rates and ultimately increasing sales and return on investment.

In the modern world a brand’s customers are its greatest asset and its greatest challenge.

The power lies with the customer – as well it should, it’s their money – and because of this the emphasis has to focus on those customers. Improving their experience and the relevancy of the messaging – whether that’s email, social, direct mail or digital advertising – is the optimum way to increase marketing efficiency and effectiveness.

What next for brands wanting to understand their audience?

  • Start with your existing customer data
    • Enrich your data to get a more comprehensive view of your customer base.
  • Profile those customers. This allows you to:
    • Identify your best customers
    • Highlight gaps and opportunities
  • Improve the customer experience by tailoring your messaging to each group depending on their characteristics
  • Use these insights to search for lookalike groups according to your plan:
    • Either potential customers similar to your best customers
    • Or different groups where you feel there is an opportunity if the messaging is different
  • Avoid spending money on less valuable customers

Fore more information on how to profile your customer check out this free white paper The Art Of Customer Profiling.

By understanding your data and profiling your customers you can be a lot smarter about how you message, engage and interact with your cross-channel customers. In addition don’t just use your findings within the marketing team. Use your understanding to define everything your business does to ensure you are a consumer-centric organisation.