The Process of Identifying Your Best Buyers
Do you know who your best buyers are? You know, the people who will bring you the most business and keep coming back for more? Instead of guessing and hoping that your marketing efforts don’t fall flat, let’s look at how you can determine who you need to be targeting.
As we discussed in a previous article, not knowing who your Best Buyer could mean wasting 50% of your ad spend on people who aren’t actually in your target market. Even if you feel like you already know who’s buying your products or services, it still doesn’t hurt to revisit your demographic to make sure you’re getting the most out of your marketing campaigns. Many business owners are surprised when they discover their Best Buyers aren’t who they expected them to be. Fortunately, this isn’t a case of jilted lovers or betrayal of friendship (“It’s like I don’t even know you anymore!”). It’s simply a matter of refocusing your efforts to reach people who really want what you’re offering.
To really drive this point home, let’s think about the 80/20 rule for a second. Eighty percent of your revenue comes from 20% of your buyers. How can you expect your business to flourish if you can’t identify these people?
Developing Your Best Buyer Guide
You can think of The Best Buyer Guide as a compass that will lead you to the right customers. Out of the 1000+ clients that we have worked with, most of them only have two Best Buyers, three max. If you try to be everything to everybody, you will overcomplicate things, spread yourself too thin, and your marketing strategy will fail to hone in on the customers that truly matter. It’s called “best” for a reason.
With this guide, you’ll be able to take a look at a person and instantly determine if they would they’d be a Best Buyer or not. It’s not a lofty goal; it’s not magic. It’s entirely possible and we’ve already done this for ourselves and our clients!
Breakin’ it Down
You should outline the specifics of who you will be targeting. Give them a personality and build up their character profile so it’s almost like you know this person in real life. Think of your Best Buyers as three-dimensional characters, the main players in the story of your marketing campaign.
1. Background
Where did they grow up? How did they end up in your city or region? Where exactly do they live? Why do they live there? Tell a story about where they came from. Knowing their story kicks off the process of getting to know them on a deeper level.
Words are wonderful, but complementing them with a photo will make it everything even clearer. Do a Google search of somebody that looks like they could be your Best Buyers, save it and put it in the guide so you can visualize what they look like. And make sure you give them a first and last name. In a sense, your Best Buyers are a work of fiction, but the consumers they represent and the benefits of identifying them are every real!
2. Demographics
Now it’s time to look at the quantifiable characteristics of your Best Buyers. Determine their sex, age, household income, home ownership, marital status, if they have children, and other demographic factors. Without this information, you won’t be able to target the right people. For example, can your product be used by both parents and people without children? If it can, how will you market your product differently to each type of person?
3. Identifiers
Can you identify if the person that you just passed by on the street is a Best Buyer? Would that 30-something yogi walking out of a popular vegan restaurant belong in your target audience? What about that older gentleman in a nice polo who just bought some shiny new golf clubs? Or the leather-clad motorcycle enthusiasts convening with their Harley Davidsons across the street? Someone’s identifiers, or interests, will help you understand the reasons for which they would buy your type of service or product.
4. Lifestyle
Think about the lifestyle of your Best Buyers and their behaviors. What’s their social status? Are you appealing to the upper echelons of society or the average joe/jane? What are their travel habits like? Are they a family-oriented individual that enjoys quality time at home with the kids? Or are they painting the town red every weekend? How much do they make annually? Do they have a lot of disposable income? Are they all about that fit life or couch potato life? Somewhere in between? Needless to say, your marketing strategy will rely heavily on your Best Buyers’ way of life.
5. Beliefs
Merriam-Webster defines “belief” as “a conviction of the truth of some statement or the reality of some being or phenomenon especially when based on examination of evidence”.
Beliefs are incredibly powerful drivers behind human behavior; think about your own beliefs and how they influence your life, for example. Beliefs make people who they are. Like the belief that family should be put above all else. Or that you should never judge a book by its cover. Or that soup is definitely better than salad. Look at beliefs through a marketing lens and you might wonder what your Best Buyer believes about your industry. Maybe they even believe some myths to be true. Examining their beliefs will help you dig deep and discover what makes them tick.
6. Challenges
If you’ve reached this point, it means that you’ve identified your Best Buyers. Congratulations! But not so fast, you still have to look at the hurdles you have to jump over to get to them.
What must you prove before they buy from you or work with you? How will you instill a sense of trust and confidence in your business? What are their objections to buying your product or service? If you can acknowledge the potential problems that could arise by trying to get them to “bite”, you will have an easier time coming up with solutions.
7. Real Quotes
Come up with a few quotes that you believe your Best Buyer would they say. Think about their beliefs and challenges in the context of your business. If you had a house painting business, for example, what would your Best Buyer say to you?
“I would love to make the atmosphere of our home more inviting and warm. I need to make sure that with three small mouths to feed.”
“We’d love to get our house painted for a refreshed look, but I am concerned about my kids potentially inhaling paint fumes. We don’t want to expose them to anything harmful.”
8. Marketing Message
Now that you’ve fleshed out the details of all the sections above, it’s time to bring them all together and convey an effective marketing message to your Best Buyers. How will you make them trust you? Target their pain points and provide “relief” for them. Identify 2-3 different ways that you can communicate with them to entice them to make a purchase.
To continue from the example above, your painting business may want to target the above Best Buyer (you will have different messaging for each type of Best Buyer) by highlighting your company’s high-level of expertise, commitment to safety, and competitive pricing in the marketing campaign.
Tools & Resources
Creating a Best Buyer Guide isn’t about guesswork. With the resources we describe below, the power will be in your hands to discover who you should be marketing to.
Facebook is much more than just a place to post baby photos and inspirational quotes. If you are not taking advantage of the tools that are available (some of them are free), you will be missing out on quite a bit of business.
If you have a Facebook page for your business, the insights it can provide are phenomenal. In addition to showing the gender breakdown of your fans and where they come from, you can also upload your client list via emails or phone numbers to find out more detailed information about them (using Ads Manager). Discover your audience’s income levels, family status, purchase history, and overall interests.
Google Analytics
Get an in-depth look at who is visiting your website and how they are interacting with it. You will see the ratio of males vs females on your site, age ranges, how long people remain on different pages, visitors’ interests, where people are from, and much more.
My Best Segments (Claritas)
This is an amazing tool that shows you who your buyers are by looking at what neighborhood they come from. It will give an idea of what they make in a year, the car they drive, what they like to read, and even TV shows they might watch. It is one of my favorite tools because it allows you to really get a sense of their identity and personality.
Straight from the Horse’s Mouth
One of the most important things that you can do is interview your current clients. Engaging in a face-to-face conversation with them will provide you with qualitative insights that analytic tools and reporting cannot.
Ask them questions and listen to what they tell you and the language they use. The key to marketing is mirroring their language inside of the messaging so your audience feels like you truly understand them. People will tell you exactly how to market to them if you listen closely enough.
Yes, it takes time and effort to set up meetings and talk to individuals rather than just gathering reports on multiple customers at once, but it’s well worth the investment! That being said, interviews should not feel like a chore. You want people to feel comfortable talking openly with you, so it should carry out like a casual 10-minute conversation.
Putting it All Together…
Knowing who your buyers are and how to engage with them is the foundation of your overall marketing efforts. If you are missing this huge piece of the puzzle, you are wasting a great portion of your ad spend. What good is your money when it’s flushed down the toilet?
Save Hours of Work with these Ready-to-Use Templates
For only $17, you can get access to a comprehensive Powerpoint file that walks you through the process of identifying your Best Buyers. We even use this ourselves! It will save you from having to create your own guide from scratch.
Want to speak your customers’ language? We have created a questionnaire , also available for only $17, that we go through with all of our clients. It has helped us hear the language they speak and figure out why they buy what they buy. With it, you’ll be able to ask them the right questions.
Fill out the box below with your email address and we’ll send you download links. It’s as simple as 1-2-3!
