Brand: To get the ‘gold’ on your customer you have to dig. Deep.
When it comes to knowing your ‘ideal’ customer, many businesses may ‘think’ they have a clear idea or understanding of who their customers are but my experience to date tells me it pays to dig a lot deeper to truly find the ‘gold’ on your customer. Never has the old marketing mantra been so appropriate and true than it is today (with fragmented media and record levels of noise in the marketplace): one way to cut through the noise is to simply ‘know your customer’.
Yes, you may ‘know’ the surface or superficial customer details such as basic demographics; age, gender, occupation etc… but beyond that most businesses are blind to the many goals, needs, wants
and often hidden motivations of their customers and ‘why’ they essentially buy. I suspect we’re all too busy in the business of being in business and focusing on performance and/or results to look at our customers in any great depth. And yet that’s exactly where the gold nuggets or key insights lie for your brand, business, strategy and marketing success.
Digging deep and revealing these core insights (or qualitative research as its known) regarding your ideal customer is akin to finding gold nuggets in them old ‘gold fields’. It goes without saying: finding the ‘gold’ can revolutionise your businesses strategic outlook, energise and re-energise your business performance and transform your fortunes. Who wouldn’t be interested in a share of those spoils?
If anyone has ever been down the ‘gold mine’ at Sovereign Hill, (I have – highly recommended) you’ll know that back in the day they dug deep! It’s exactly the same today with your brand and marketing and the relationship with your customers. Digging deep takes effort but it pays off massively due to
the insights gained. It does however require the right motivation and a little bit of elbow grease initially.
It requires an understanding of the value of the investment (why does knowing my ‘ideal’ customer matter?) and the potential returns (knowing my ‘ideal’ customer can help to generate increased revenue because I know specifically the what, when, how and why they buy from me).
Like those gold diggers in times past, the ones who arrived on the scene first tended to put the least amount of effort in for maximum return. So it pays to get in early to secure your ‘lot’, ‘territory’ or ‘ideal’ customer to extend the analogy. ‘Working smarter’ however means you can target that rich vein of gold rather than expending too much effort or wasting your precious time and resources.
Getting focused on your ideal customer is the same as panning for gold. Sifting through the ‘debris’
(in the nicest possible way) requires technique, a little time and persistence but it leaves you with the nuggets. ‘No time’, you say? We always make time for what’s important, but what if it was an exercise condensed to 60 minutes? Don’t know where to start? Well, if we had access to a customer ‘gold detector’ wouldn’t that be something worth exploring?
Find, connect and get ‘in sync’ with your ‘ideal’ customer by digging for golden insights.
Get to know your customer if you want the gold medal in business.
As The Brand Entrepreneur, I help entrepreneurs and business owners deeply define their ‘ideal’ customer in 60 minutes through The ‘Avatar’ Workshop. I’m passionate and focused on helping businesses identify where their ‘ideal’ customers ‘hang out’. I then build brands & design assets
in those relevant channels to help get brands ‘in sync’ and connected to ‘customers they care’ about – because successful brands care about people, not branding.