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How to create an ideal customer profile framework? This structure will make your lead generation efforts work.
When one hears the word “leads,” names and email addresses are the first things to come to mind. You might assume leads are mere contacts that visit your website or interact with your business on dedicated channels. That is where the problem lies.
Your leads are human beings and not simply a part of spreadsheets. Converting “leads” into paying customers requires a significant amount of nurturing, and that is not possible unless you have a clear understanding of who you are dealing with. Further, generating a high volume of leads does not guarantee a high conversion rate if you have not nailed your ideal customer profile.
Also, if the leads entering your sales pipeline aren’t qualified or high-quality, no marketing push would top them to become loyal customers. A customer profile helps you know which leads are “high-quality.”
It is a research-based, detailed description of the target customer. Think of an ideal customer profile as the customer you would hate to lose, or as a type of client, you should target. It describes who your ideal customers are, their pain points, and how they make decisions apart from basics such as demographic details, behavioral traits, and interests.
The official definition of an ideal customer profile is, “An ideal customer profile tells you everything about the people you would want to bring as your customers.”
Customer profile also called user profile or buyer persona is a single document that includes:
Now that we know what an ideal customer profile is, you may be wondering if you actually need them. The answer is, yes you do. A survey by Tech Validate found that 99% of marketers cite the ability to create, store and leverage 360-degree customer profiles as important or extremely important.
Here is why marketers consider an ideal customer profile to be so important.
With an ICP, you know the exact traits your target audience shares. This data serves as a gold mine for sales teams as they can actively generate new leads that fit the same criteria as your existing customers. For example, if you know your customer profile leads are in-house marketers participating in online communities, you would find that on sites like Hacker News.
Also, it comes easier than running generic and costly Facebook ads to people who might be your ideal user, right? Simply put, you are heading to websites where they engage at their own time, and not invading their space elsewhere on the internet or social media.
How many of the leads that make way into your pipeline actually convert? Does it make sense to nurture them all, when you could identify the leads who are most likely to purchase? For every new lead that comes in, map them across the ideal customer profile and the data you have collected about them. Then on, you can prioritize nurturing those who are a match.
Personalization is here to stay, undoubtedly. More than 50% of customers are willing to share their personal data in exchange for personalized discounts or offers. This is where you can take advantage of customer profiling. With account-based marketing, you would have to personalize the communication your sales team has with every lead. When you are doing it on a large scale, you would not have time to invest in learning about individual leads.
When the ideal customer profile comes into the mix, you can focus on segments with similar pain points and prove that your product or service can solve them.
When a lead becomes a customer, it is the start of a relationship. The most successful businesses pay equal attention to customer retention. That involves keeping existing customers, encouraging them to become loyal to your brand, and persuading them to purchase regularly.
There is a strong reason for this. Retaining existing customers is 5 times cheaper than acquiring new ones. The ideal customer profile fits in here because you can use the lead’s interest to offer personalized post-purchase customer marketing campaigns.
Why wouldn’t they continue buying from your brand when you send them free and relevant content regularly once they are on-board?
When you know potential customers’ likes and dislikes, you can also cross-sell and upsell your products or services. This activity not only delights your customers and makes them want to purchase from you again but also is an excellent revenue-generation tactic.
To experience these benefits, you will need to make ideal customer profiles as soon as possible. The trick here is to not fall into the trap of assuming the traits your customers share. The biggest challenge is accessing enough data to create an overview of your user.
In fact, one of the major challenges marketers face is missing important data points that are crucial to providing a comprehensive view of their customers. If you are looking to capture the right data points for creating an accurate and ideal customer profile, follow these X steps.
Customer personas work efficiently when they are accurate. Some ways to find data you have already collected from the existing customers are:
To gather data about real customers, go directly to the people who bought from you. That makes them the most targeted people to look at. Ask your sales team to tell you about your existing customers’ characteristics, demographics, and traits. The customer interview checklist includes:
Businesses in the pre-launch stage or that are launching in new geography could survey and interview prospects. Get down to the basics such as:
Xoxoday Plum allows you to give customers gift cards, incentives, and discounts on products. It helps companies improve their lead velocity through rewards integrated with the CRM.
Your sales, marketing, and customer service teams have direct interaction with customers and leads. Include their insights while building the ICP.
Once you have collected all the information, put it down together to form templates.
Your work isn’t done with creating the ICP. For long-term value, you would need to keep them updated.
If you are ready to start finding targeted leads matching your user profile, here are 2 examples that you can draw inspiration from.
Regin, CEO, Company size - 150 to 200
Background – Regin is constantly looking for ways to reduce cost, improve efficiency and streamline his business. His goal is to create a company that develops cutting-edge technology and methodologies.
Behaviors
Motivators
Needs
Challenges
This profile covers Regin’s behaviors, challenges, needs, and motivators driving his business.
When you equip your sales teams with a customer profile such as Regin’s, they know exactly what Steve is looking for and can pitch the offerings accordingly.
If you run a digital marketing agency and your ideal customer is a marketing operations manager, the details you need for a B2B buyer persona are:
Christina, Marketing manager, company size – 35 to 50
Job role description – Acts as a bridge between marketing, sales, product, and IT teams. Involved in creating the project scope, technology evaluation, data analysis, implementation of marketing campaigns, and creation of reports.
Company details
Related tiles
Tools and applications
In addition to sticking to the standard data such as company size, turnover, or location, this ICP template lists the tools and applications the target customers use. Your sales team can mention
Customer personas work efficiently when they are accurate. Updating them periodically should be a part of your marketing strategy. If you can continuously help your leads evaluate your offerings on their terms, you will win every time. Here are three ways to improve your personas:
What is it taking you to convert your leads? What is the trigger or incentive which nudges them to move over the finish line? Take a look at your customer’s journey, and you may find some clues about how you can update the personas.
For instance, use the heat mapping technique to understand how a website visitor interacts with a landing page and navigation bars before filling the contact form. Or, which social media platform is most helpful in bringing customers to your website before they purchase something. Leverage built-in social media analytics to help with those numbers.
Now that you have been prospecting your personas for a while, you will have a lot more data about the audience behaviors—which means your personas can be more narrowed down and your marketing activities become more targeted. This could include their heightened use of a social media platform or the sudden drop in interest in an otherwise popular product.
Numbers never lie. As your business evolves and grows, your customers do too. Therefore, it is an excellent idea to re-analyze your transaction histories and customer data. If you have been running ads, check the data to see what kinds of ads are responsible for maximum conversions.
The information could be related to change in buying preferences, demographics, social media usage, pricing, and more. This can help you establish updated customer personas with greater accuracy—something you want to get right every time you progress in the business.
Most businesses make the mistake of having only one ideal customer profile. Do not limit yourself. If you offer a broad range of services or cater to multiple sectors, it is vital to create a persona for each of them. That will help you segment your marketing and sales efforts efficiently.
Update your customer personas periodically. Research states 65% of businesses exceeding their lead and revenue goals have updated their personas in the last six months. The reason is simple—the market is evolving rapidly, so are consumer tastes and preferences.
You have to have the most accurate and recent information about your leads if you want to convert them. Are you ready to define your customer personas.
