If you own and run a business, your primary responsibility is to create and retain customers. Now, in order to keep your buyers to keep coming back, you need to cultivate a relationship, based on trust and loyalty. This is where Customer Relationship Management (CRM) comes in.
However, in spite of implementing all the measures to convert your leads into actual customers through customer relationship management software, at times you see that your efforts do not yield results. Now, why does that happen? One of the primary reasons might be that your leads are not your targeted customers. In fact, they are not relevant to the services and products offered by your company. And if this is the case, no amount of strategies will be enough to generate profits. Hence, the first step is to zero-in on the ideal customer base. How do you do that? By creating targeted customer profiles. But before proceeding to the various nitty-gritty of buyer personas, let’s understand what does a customer profile actually mean.
Customer profile: Definition
A target customer profile comprises clients, companies, or buyers, whose requirements tally with the products and services offered by your organisation. As a result, they help in generating revenues and add value to your business.
If you own a B2C company, your buyer personas should contain the entire summary of your prospects’ vital information. This can include the age/gender of your buyers, their purchase history, employment details, interests and pain points, among others. If your targeted customers are B2B clients, then the customer profile can include the company revenue, their business targets, size and employee count.
How do user profiles help your business?
Creating, storing, and using the data from customer profiles is very important to further the growth of your business. It helps in finding new leads. How? When you create a buyer persona, you can extract the exact, relevant attributes from the database. So, you can use this information to find more leads that showcase similar traits. This is a much better option than running generic marketing campaigns or putting up advertisements, without even knowing who might be your actual profit-generating customer. Hence, by using a more customized approach, you can quickly identify new targets.
Buyers personas are invaluable resources for your sales team. By going through this database, they can easily separate high-quality leads from non-value-adding prospects. Hence, your sales, as well as marketing departments, can create the right pitch to connect with the right people. This approach not only reduces your team’s efforts but makes the entire process accurate and more specific. Once you focus and nurture your relationship with these specific leads, you shall see your profits growing.
Now that you know the benefits of targeted customer profiles, let’s learn how to create them.
A step-by-step guide to identifying qualified leads and create targeted customer profiles
Now, that you know the importance of customer profiles, how can you create the perfect database?
Let’s approach this with a step-by-step method:
- Understand your long-term goals
It is important that you are sure about your long-term goals. You may want more visitors on your site, increase the sales of your products, or enhance social media influence. Whatever be your annual target, ensure that your target customers are perfectly aligned to these goals and can help you reach them.
- Hold a discussion with your sales team
Secondly, discuss with your sales team. They are the perfect resources to give you inputs about customers since they interact with them on a daily basis. So, have a thorough conversation and extract a list of the common attributes of those buyers who are actually buying your products or availing your services. Now, you can use these traits to target other prospects who display similar behavioural patterns.
- Take the help of tools
Next, you can take the help of tools such as Google Analytics to gauge the activity on your website. Examine basic details like the demography, economic condition, brand preferences, spending habits, interests, or hobbies. This will guide you to understand which people are actually converting into sales.
- Take a survey
The third step is to conduct a survey. Ask your customers about their opinions, feedback, and needs. Once you have the answers, analyze common responses and compile them. Try to get as much data as possible — so that you can have a gold mine of the perfect buyer personas.
How does CRM come in the picture?
CRM or contact management software are used to create a template for your customer profile in your CRM. This database can be used by the sales and marketing teams to check the typed of lead you want to attract. Hence, you won’t be wasting crucial hours in finding and nurturing leads that are not profitable for your business.
Final take
Of course, if you wish to see your business grow, you need to invest time and resources on creating the ideal, targeted customer profiles. This database is a goldmine for your company, especially for the sales and marketing departments. The more insights you have about your customers, the more you can gather high-quality leads who shall be instrumental in generating profits in the present as well as the future.
