Module 9 - Understand everything about the audience

Why is understanding your customer worth this much effort?

Because the more we understand about the customer who is going to buy your product or service, the better informed we are, from a targeting perspective and from a creative perspective. This is one of my favourite parts of the process that we do: understanding everything about your customer, and I mean everything.

We have developed some processes over the years, and there is a sheet that is downloadable after this particular video. It might have a bit too much in it, depending on what kind of business you are. Some of these questions are more for business to business and some are better for consumers, but it gives you a really good idea of the kind of questions you can ask.

It shapes how we build our ads and what we need to do. How do we communicate with them? How do we engage with them on an emotional level? How do we help persuade them that this product or service is right for them?

It helps in so many other ways as well. Even finding some images of the types of customer can help you with styling notes when it comes to doing photography and video shoots, the kind of music you would pick, and the kind of tone of voice you would pick for voiceovers. If you are targeting a young teenage group of boys and girls, it is clearly no good having a voiceover that sounds like me, unless there is a really good reason to do so.

How many customer profiles should you have?

You should have several, not one. Talk to your customers, find out what their names are, find out their age, what they like, where they live, what they like to eat, what they do not like to eat, and what their pain points are.

What goes in a customer profiling sheet?

The sheet starts with the basics and then moves into environment, daily life, and motivation. There are lots of things out there on the market, but hopefully ours gives you an idea.

We start with the name and where they live, because people in different locations have different nuances about how they act. Then the family relationship, the gender, the age, the job, the education and the income. Those are fairly basic things and they are not the most important, but it is good to paint a picture.

What makes the environment section more interesting?

The environment section is more interesting because it tells you where people actually are and what they actually consume. What do they follow on social media, if at all? What social media platforms are they on? My mum is on Facebook, my son is not, and there is a 50 year gap between them, if not more.

What channels do they watch? Do they watch YouTube, do they watch TV, do they watch Netflix or HBO? What movies, what shows, what likes and interests do they have? It starts to paint a really important picture of their personalities, and that is so crucial.

What books do they read? What magazines? What podcasts? What do their weekends look like, what are their activities, and what is the daily schedule like? If you are targeting very busy business people, their daily lives are going to be very different to somebody who is semi-retired.

Somebody who is more left brain, more mathematical and into detail, will have different types of activities to somebody who is right brain, and the hooks we talked about before and the way of engaging with these people will be very different. Somebody who is left brain will read a very different type of book to somebody who is right brain. Take all of these things into account.

Why do fears and frustrations matter so much?

Because knowing what scares or frustrates people helps you align your product or service, since it takes that pain away, alleviates that fear, solves that problem, and allows them to achieve their desires and aspirations.

So ask about driving forces and aspirations. In a business coaching realm they might want to make lots of money, or it might be that they just want to spend more time outdoors or more time with their families. What are the desires? What are the fears? What are the frustrations? These are fundamental questions you need to think about and ask of your customer base.

Other interesting questions include what is the biggest result I can help a business or person achieve. What is it that my business, my product or my service can help this person get out of this relationship, by engaging with this content or by buying the product or service?

Think about the favourite client you have ever had. Who have your best customers been, and why are they the best customers? What is the biggest problem these people have? What frustrates them the most? What are the four or five things that help them achieve the results or the success?

How do you adapt the questions to your own business?

Take each question and rewrite it in terms of your own product, because not all of them will be relevant. Some of these are business based but could still be personal.

Take an outdoor brand and think about the customer base. It might be that they want to get away every weekend, that they want to be outdoors more, that they want to experience fresh air more, or get up mountains more. Does the product help them do that, if it is a pair of walking boots?

Then there are the harder questions. What keeps them awake at night? What is worrying them? What keeps them anxious? What humiliates them? What is the cost of them staying where they are now? That last one might seem like a bit of an odd question, but if you do not buy this new pair of walking boots, you are going to keep suffering with pains in your feet and you are not enjoying the outdoors as much as you want. There are lots of ways you can come at these.

I really encourage you to download the sheet and have a think about these questions. Some will be right for you and some will not. Even if you only fill half of them in for five potential customers, you will start to understand so much more, and you will start to see how you can use some of this really insightful information in your creative, your targeting and other aspects of your marketing and your business.

Why list someone's least favourite things?

Because the things people dislike tell you as much as the things they like, and they help you build a thread. At the end of the sheet, list their favourite things: activities, colours, hobbies, food, car, destinations. You will start to build a profile of what people are like, visually and word based, and that is gold dust for you, because you will start to see a thread.

But what is absolutely brilliant is listing their least favourite things. If they like Dubai, for example, it is probably highly likely that they do not like camping. I am pigeonholing people a little bit, but there is probably a lot of truth in it. One is very plush, very luxurious and very hot, the other is probably a little bit damp and a bit more basic in terms of the lifestyle choice. I am not judging either one either way, but they are likely to have other hobbies, foods, programmes, songs and bands that they like too. You start to paint a really good picture of what these people's lives are like.

Why add pictures to the profile?

Add pictures because words and visuals do different jobs for you. The last thing I would do is add pictures of what you think they look like. I have done my usual thing there, spelling things wrong and typing wrong, but putting pictures in of all those things you have described is really useful.

Some people work really well with words like this on a document, and some people like to visualise it. The advantage of doing both is that you have got a set of words that are useful for keywords and writing copy, and something visual that is really helpful for styling, for colours, or for the look of your ads.

How often should you update the profile?

Continually. This document is one of the most useful you will ever use, and it is one you should keep updating. When you get a customer on board, ask who they are, whether they fit this, or whether we need to tweak it a little bit. It is an ongoing process, but it is an invaluable one for your business.

To us it is gold dust as a business, and I hope it is to your business as well. Please do download that document and make the very best of it for your customer profile.