Who’s your ideal customer?
As a small business, you probably have an idea of the kind of customer that you want to market to. Maybe they’re women between the ages of 18 and 35, or maybe they’re men between the ages of 50 and 80. But how much do you really know about the demographic(s) you’re trying to market to? And how does this aspirational persona match up with the real people who buy your products?
The marketing funnel is a model for understanding your customer journey. Having a solid image in your head of the person or people who will be undertaking that journey is the first step towards designing a marketing strategy that attracts, converts, and retains customers. In particular, you will need to document the following:
- Ideal customer profile (ICP):
Your definition of the perfect customer for your brand. Create an ICP to contextualize what demographic is likely your top audience and what drives them towards becoming these VIPs. - Buyer personas:
A set of additional customer personas who are likely to shop from your brand for a variety of reasons. Document all kinds of buyer personas to identify the various motivations that all kinds of shoppers may have when they shop from your business.
Identify example buyer personas
Your marketing strategy should be built around your ideal customer persona. When determining your target customer, keep in mind how this will affect your brand voice and how you communicate with each segment of your customer base.
Tab through the gallery below for inspiration on how to fill out your persona template. These examples are customer personas for Beantown, a fictional coffee brand. Use these as inspiration while you build your own.
Jonathan
Age: 35
Occupation: Creative director
Location: New York City, New York, USA
Living situation: Lives alone and takes pride in his apartment
Relationship status: Single
Likes: Modern art, coffee table books, knowing what the coolest new restaurants are
What he buys from Beantown: Premium-grade coffee beans, filter papers, and a gooseneck kettle
Agnes
Age: 28
Occupation: Marketing for an organic food company
Location: Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Living situation: Lives with 1 roommate
Relationship status: Dating
Likes: Getting up early, running, music festivals, trying new food with friends
What she buys from Beantown: Bestselling house blend, seasonal blends, and a set of matching mugs
Paula and Jeff
Ages: 62 and 65
Occupation: Retirees
Location: Rockport, Massachusetts, USA
Living situation: Live together with their dog, kids come back to stay a lot
Relationship status: Married
Likes: Cooking for family, long dog walks, convenience
What they buy from Beantown: Coffee pods for their Nespresso machine
Create your own ICPs and buyer personas
Use our persona template (Part 2 in your workbook) to create your own ideal customer persona using the prompts. If you already have an ideal customer persona mapped out, now is the perfect time to refresh it before you embark on the rest of the certificate!
Explore the dropdowns below for tips and best practices on filling out the persona template.
Explore more than 1 buyer persona
It’s extremely likely that there is more than 1 type of person who shops or would shop from your business beyond just your ideal customer profile (ICP).
Take Beantown, for example: Although Jonathan fits their ideal customer profile, they know they also have a slightly older male ‘coffee snob’ persona.
Additionally, their new range of carbon-neutral coffee pods means they’ve been able to target Nespresso machine owners who care more about great taste and convenience than they do about complex brewing methods.
Note: Our template allows you to create 3 buyer personas; if you currently have only 1 persona, we encourage you to think bigger and consider other types of shoppers for your brand.
‘Aspirational persona’ vs ‘reality persona’
Need help thinking of other personas? Start by defining your ‘aspirational persona’ in relation to your ‘reality persona.’
Your aspirational persona is the person you really wish would shop from your brand, but can’t rely on as your only source of revenue. For Beantown, this is their ‘coffee snob’ persona, who is ready to spend more than the average person on coffee, and Beantown carries a range of premium single-origin beans and equipment just for them.
However, restricting their marketing strategy to just this persona would massively limit their growth potential as a brand, so they have additional ‘reality’ personas like Agnes, who are interested in consuming high-quality, environmentally friendly coffee at home without investing in pricey coffee gadgets.
Learn more about your existing customers
Your reality persona might surprise you. A well-known example of this is the shampoo brand Mane ’n Tail, which was originally intended for horses but became more famous for its effect on human hair, causing a major pivot in its founders’ marketing strategy.
Valuable demographic information can be difficult to uncover from web analytics and order data alone, so the best way to find out more about your customers is simply to ask them. You can use social media, your email list, and any other channels to ask your customers to fill out a survey, telling you more about themselves.
A great way to incentivize this is by hosting a giveaway for 1 lucky survey participant. What you discover may surprise you!
Segment your customers
Once you havedata on at least some of your customers, store this in a way that makes sense and makes it easy for you to segment and target your different persona groups. Many email service providers will allow you to assign custom properties or tags to customer profiles, for example, ‘Gender:Male’ or ‘FavoriteSport: Football.’
Start collecting these same properties from new customers at the sign-up stage; for example, via the pop-up form on your website or in person at a trade show or event. That way, you can proactively learn more about the people who interact with your business and scale any future personalization efforts.