Have you created a PICTURE of your PERFECT Customer?

One of the exercises in my forthcoming Playbook, which also forms part of the courses I run, and my work with one-to-one clients, is developing a ‘Customer Avatar’ or ‘Buyer Persona’ for your business. This is an outline of a ‘typical or ideal customer’ and can be illustrated with images from magazines, or just comprise a written description of their key attributes. This may include demographic and psychographic criteria which demonstrates WHO they are, and WHY they will buy from you. Knowing this helps you find the best marketing channels to reach them, and allows you to tweak your messages to make them resonate with the greatest impact.

Buyer personas/customer avatars have long been used by big brands and also for charity and political campaigning. Recently high-street retailers Debenhams and M&S have announced details of their marketing strategies and referenced their core target markets through the creation of ‘customer avatars’ or ‘buyer personas’.

I wanted to share these here as I think it’s useful to see how they are being used in practice by brands we all know, to get a sense of how it works at a larger scale.

http://www.standard.co.uk/…/forget-mrs-ms-its-time-to-meet-…

It is also interesting to note the segmentation of M&S shoppers based on their previous buying behaviour here: http://www.thedrum.com/…/ms-boss-reveals-5-point-plan-re-es…

Have you segmented your target market or client base?

Do you have a clear picture of your perfect customer that helps you understand who you are serving and how you can serve them more effectively?