Discover 4 ways to define your target audience or ideal client

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When companies plan to create a new product, they take a good amount of time to validate that their theories about what the product should have are aligned with the real needs of their target audience and thus guarantee its success. Why not do the same when planning marketing strategies and campaigns? Because it is always easier to assume that what we believe our customers like is true.

What happens when marketing and sales strategies are defined based on instinct or what has been done in the past? Often, we consumers are the ones who suffer from spam, unwanted phone calls, annoying ads on our vp technical email database social networks and a series of other invasive tools that only manage to distance us from the products and services that we often do need. Put your hand on your heart and admit that it has happened to you too.

And marketing directors also resent it because by carrying out campaigns that have no real commercial impact, they close the door to future investments in digital or other media.

We therefore invite you to pause your marketing planning and take some time to define and validate the description of your ideal client by following these 4 steps.

1. Start by defining what your marketing and sales team believes about your customers
It's essential to put into black and white what your own team has learned about who your ideal customer is. Start by asking people who have contact with the customer what they know about what kind of person they are, what their needs and challenges are, why they come to you to solve them, etc. Take the time to run a workshop to ask these questions with your team and try to involve both people at the operational and management level as this exercise allows them to align their vision of the customer.

2. Contrast these definitions with what your current, potential and ideal clients say
Now it’s time to get out of your office and find out what your current customers have in common: what are their needs, goals, and challenges? How do they solve them with your products? What made them choose you over your competitors? And you can expand these questions even further by conducting one-on-one interviews with several of your customers. Often their answers will lead to further questions that should be aimed at finding out what characteristics they share, what “pain” they alleviate with your product or service, and what would be a real value proposition for them. All of this information will be useful when planning your next marketing campaign.

3. Use multiple validation tools and take the time to compare results
Use one-on-one interviews, surveys with few questions, and focus groups at this point to achieve a better result. Once you process this information, compare it with the information you obtained from your team and highlight the differences to present when sharing the results of your research. The approach and tools of the lean startup methodology are especially useful for carrying out this process.