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How to Identify and Target Your Ideal Customer

Ideal Customer

Who is your ideal customer? Marketing experts say you should know him or her as well as you know yourself. No matter what product or service you sell, you need to know every detail about your ideal customer if you want to succeed in your business. Armed with this knowledge, you can hone your marketing campaign to better reach your target audience. Consider these tips for identifying your ideal customers and getting inside their heads.

Determine What Problems Your Product or Service Solves

If you aren’t sure who would be interested in buying what you have to sell, consider what issues you seek to solve. That will help you determine who might benefit from your business. For example, if you have a proofreading service, your goal is to ensure that anything your customers write is grammatically correct. This type of service likely only appeals to people who write a lot and need some help perfecting their content. This could describe college students, aspiring authors or professional marketing copywriters. Of those, the first two may not have the financial resources to afford your service but the copywriters might. Now you have some idea of who to market to, which will help you focus your marketing campaign.

Research Past Customers

Another way to figure out who might be interested in your product or service is to find out who has actually purchased from you in the past. Mine your existing sales data to find out what you can about your past customers, such as age, gender, location, profession, income level and education. Clearly this doesn't apply to brand new businesses, but you might take steps to collect this data going forward. If you have not been around long enough to have any customers yet, you can determine your ideal customer by looking at your direct competitors and considering who their customers are. And regardless of how many customers have actually purchased from you, if you have a business page on a social network, you have a way to research your ideal customer. You will find that you can learn a lot by just taking a look at the profiles of people who comment, like or share your posts, since you can usually see their location, gender and even their profession and some of their interests. This will help you create a customer profile.

Use This Information to Target Customers

Now that you know who to target, it's time to build effective marketing campaign based on your data. When you know the age range, location, profession and interests of potential customers, you know where to position ads for your business. This can help whether you are using social media advertising options or billboards on busy roads. Either way, when you market without knowing who you are trying to reach, you are likely to waste valuable time and money.

To make the most of your marketing budget, invest the time to identify and explore the mind and lifestyle of potential targets. You can further maximize your budget by consulting a professional internet marketing company. They have the experience necessary to increase your bottom line by helping you identify target markets and your ideal customer.

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