Knowing Your Customers Through Profiling
Marketing is an absolute necessity in today’s world of high global competition. Whether you own a multi-million dollar business or one out of your basement you need to market your products. The more you know about your customer the more likely you are to be successful in your overall marketing strategy. Being successful in marketing means that you not only increase your revenue but you spend less money making more money because you are marketing to the right group.
Before you can really get into the process of marketing with any level of success you will have to know about which customers your product will most likely sell to. For example, you aren’t going to sell many diapers to a single college student unless they are looking for a cheap way to wax their car. Companies have been developing profiles and designing ways to understand their customers for a long time.
Key Methods of Understanding Your Customers:
Affinity Profiling: In affinity profiling you analyze the persons buying habits to better match the product to the customer. For example, a man who buys lots of tools is likely a do-it-yourself type person. This same person would likely be interested in items like jeans, work boots and home equipment.
Demographic Profiling: In demographic profiling we look at a person’s income, education level, marriage status, location, whether or not they have kids and any other pertinent demographic information to determine what type of products a person would be interested in. For example a man making 50K or more a year with two children might be more likely to purchase a family vacation than a man who is living single.
Psychological Profiling: Psychological profiling happens when we try and assess the psychological motivations of a particular demographic group. Let us say that a single male who earns a high income and recently purchased a Armani watch is interested in status symbols. This same person might be interested in a BMW car or Gucci clothing.
Lifestyle Coding: When we use lifestyle coding we look at how a person lives their lives (i.e. hobbies and habits) to determine what type of products they use. For example, a person who likes horse riding may also be interested in horse riding equipment. Likewise, a person who hunts is likely interested in tree stands, rifles and outdoor clothing.
Cluster Coding: We all have heard about class and how this ties to social activities. For example if you are a suburban up-in-comer you might have certain characteristics and preferences based upon this culture. An educated, suburban male who earns a reasonable income would be interested in status symbol conservative style clothing.
