You want to understand your current and potential customers better. At Vernon Research, we know how to do it.
Who are your typical customers? Who are the prospects you could most easily turn into customers? How do they act? What do they value? Who or what influences their decisions?
Your customers and potential customers are more predictable than you think. They engage, inquire, compare, evaluate, negotiate and purchase according to specific patterns etched into transactional and behavioral histories that can be identified and tracked.
What is the benefit of understanding your customers? Customer profiling can help you
- Identify and categorize the traits and characteristics of current customers
- Pinpoint the primary characteristics of potential customers
- Identify how your customers and prospects make purchase decisions
- Define your ideal product placement, positioning and advertising
- Determine which prospects can easily be converted to customers
Customer profiling is useful for decisions related to product development, product or brand positioning, and advertising and public relations campaigns.
Our clients find that understanding their current and potential customers enables them to discover the best methods of reaching out to these groups and the most effective messages. We collect the appropriate demographic and psychographic information, and then apply a suite of statistical methods to discover the characteristics of people with a preference to buy. When defining target markets, our clients rely on us to develop profiles of potential customers and likely purchasers by identifying the key buying behavior traits of their customers and discovering the most effective methods of reaching them.
QUESTIONS VERNON RESEARCH CAN HELP YOU ANSWER
- What do my customers look like on paper?
- Who are my best prospects?
- Why do my customers buy my products?
- Who is involved in the purchasing decision in my customers‘ families or businesses?
- What are my customers’ spending habits?
WHAT DO MY CUSTOMERS LOOK LIKE ON PAPER? WHO ARE MY BEST PROSPECTS?
Existing customers can be profiled by demographic criteria, such as age, race, gender, income level, household size, occupation, education level, and marital status. They can also be defined by psychographic criteria such as values, attitudes, interests, etc., and by buying behavior criteria, such as usage rates, brand loyalty, and buying frequency. Using the profile of the existing customer, potential prospects can then be identified.
A typical demographic profile for B2B customers may include such factors as their customer base, number of employees, type of products, geographic coverage, ownership (public, private, government, etc.) and annual revenue. You may choose to target a market based on one or more of these criteria.
WHY DO MY CUSTOMERS BUY MY PRODUCTS?
Consider all of the reasons why people might purchase your product or service. What are their needs? Their wants? Their priorities? Their problems? What is on their wish lists? Communicating what features your product offers is important, but it is the benefits of those features that are most important to customers and will motivate them to buy. Knowing this information will help you to shape your marketing message.
WHO IS INVOLVED IN THE PURCHASING DECISION IN MY CUSTOMERS’ FAMILIES OR BUSINESSES?
Your product’s end user may have any number of roles in the decision-making process leading up to purchase. He/she may have little or no input in the process, may be part of a team or family who evaluates choices, may make the recommendation but not authorize purchase, or make the decision to purchase alone. Knowing his or her level of involvement and authority to buy as well as the motivations of others involved in the process is key to making your marketing activities more effective.
WHAT ARE MY CUSTOMERS’ SPENDING HABITS?
Do your customers buy online, in stores or both? Do they buy in bulk or individually? Do they prefer to buy direct or through a distributor or retailer? Are purchases tied to seasons, holidays, or other triggering events? Do they buy for anticipated needs or in response to current needs? Do they pay cash, use credit or want financing? There are a multitude of factors that affect spending habits. At Vernon Research, we can track them all. Analyzing the decision-making process of your customers will help you understand what motivates and prompts them to buy.
Interested in talking with Vernon about customer profiling?
Please contact us today.
