Creating Customer Profiles is Important

This past weekend, Oshyn was one of the sponsors of MOVE!, a two-day conference for women to turn their ideas into movement. It was amazing to be part of an event full of inspiring, entrepreneurial women. During the conference, hosts Tatjana Luethi and Jose Caballer from The Skool talked about the importance of creating customer profiles for your overall business plan.

Why are customer profiles so important?

When starting your business, or working with a brand, it’s easy to think about what you want the business or brand to represent and how you want it to be perceived. It’s even easier to forget about what your customer wants, leading to unhappy customers and low sales. This is why creating customer profiles is so important. Every time you make a business decision, whether it’s to upgrade your existing product or build a new website, you should tie it back to your profiles: what do your customers really want?

How to create a customer profile

Ok, so you know why profiling your customer and learning about their goals and needs is important, but how do you do it? Start off by drawing out four quadrants. Then, decide who your target customers are. There is no limit, but you should have at least three (i.e. if your target is single dads, you can break that down into single dads with full-time jobs, single dads who live with family to help them raise kids, etc. These different groups of single dads will have different wants and needs). Next, you’ll need to find these customers. If you’re lucky enough to get real customers that you can interview — DO IT! However, not everyone is lucky enough to have real people in the flesh to talk to, so you may have to use data that your company has about its own customers. If you can’t get a hold of either of these resources, base your profile off of someone you know who fits the requirements. Give each profile a name (to go at the top of the quadrant), but make sure it’s a fictitious name as you don’t want to call anyone out or make anyone feel uncomfortable.

Third, you’ll need to write down the facts that you know about them in the first quadrant, their demographics. What is their age? What do they do? What is their income? Where do they live? Are they married, single, divorced? Do they have kids? etc. This is just the overview that will help you create the next section, their story. In the Story quadrant, next to Demographics, you’ll write down more details about your customer’s interests. Are they stressed at their job? Are they saving money to buy their first house? Are they looking for a way to advance their career? By answering these questions in the Story section, you’ll help build out the next quadrant, their Goals.

The Goals section is where you’ll get specific about the customer's goals pertaining to the product or service you offer. For example, if you offer grocery delivery services and your customer is a working mother who said in her Story that she is often picking up food on her way home from work and wants to have healthier options for her family, one of her goals may be to have a healthy homemade meal with her family 3 - 4 times a week. How you meet your customer’s goals is the next section, Needs. In the final quadrant, you’ll want to tit-for-tat your customers goals to what they need from you. Per my example above, if your customer’s goals is to have a healthy homemade meal with her family 3 - 4 times a week, she needs a grocery delivery service that can provide her with healthy, easy meal options right to her door.

How customer profiles benefit your business

Putting all this work into learning about your customers’ lives is not in vain. This should be the basis of your business. At the end of the day, businesses are there to make money and having happy customers makes money. You should be making your decisions based off your customer profiles and how it benefits them.

About MOVE!

Oshyn was proud to sponsor MOVE!, part of The Skool’s three-part conference for empowering women to turn their ideas into movement. With workshops and guest speakers, like Lynda Weinman, co-founder of Lynda.com, The Skool’s conference series gives you the tools to turn your business into a success. See pictures from the event on Oshyn’s Facebook page.