A forest walk in a company of intelligent friends can be both refreshing and amazingly informative. Last weekend I was lucky to have a captivating discussion of ways how people make decisions for their businesses while hiking through a beautiful forest.
“You make important business decisions more often than I eat ice-cream,” I said to my friend, “How can you be sure your investment will not be lost?”
“This is super easy,” he answered, “I formulate my goal as precisely as possible; then, I ask myself what I should do to achieve it. The questions I put to myself constitute are my action plan: by finding answers to the questions, I approach my goal.”
“Do you use the same method to define your target audience?” I asked.
“Sure, this is the only method I use for all mental operations,” he replied.
On returning home, I gave some thinking to his words and tried to apply his method for creating a customer persona (ICP) to market my business. It took me some time to formulate my goal (also a very useful exercise, btw), and finally the goal was set: Create an ideal customer persona (ICP) that will guide my marketing, product development, and customer service strategies.
And here are the sets of questions I came up with. The exercise of answering the questions involved a good portion of research and thinking, but eventually it helped me to better understand my target audience and tune my marketing plan to satisfy their particular needs.
NOTE: The sets of questions will be different depending on the goal you set for yourself. In this post, I tried to put together a ‘universal’ list of questions that cover a general goal and can be applied to various types of target audiences: in your particular research you may decide to drop some of the questions as irrelevant. Still, try using this method, it really works well, because it helps you create a very realistic image of your potential buyer.
- Demographic Information
- What is their age range?
- What is their gender?
- What is their marital status?
- Do they have children? If so, how many and what ages?
- What is their education level?
- What is their occupation?
- What is their annual income?
- Where do they live? (Urban, suburban, rural)
- What is their geographic location? (City, state, country)
2. Psycho-graphic Information
What are their interests and hobbies?
What are their values and beliefs?
What lifestyle do they lead?
What are their personality traits? (e.g., introverted, extroverted)
What are their attitudes towards your product/service?
3. Behavioral Information
- How do they spend their free time?
- What social media platforms do they use?
- How do they prefer to consume information? (Blogs, videos, podcasts)
- What is their buying behavior? (Impulse, planned, need-based)
- What brands do they currently use and trust?
- How often do they purchase products/services like yours?
4. Goals and Challenges
What are their primary goals?
What challenges do they face that your product/service can solve?
What are their pain points in relation to your industry?
What are their expectations from products/services in your category?
5. Decision-Making Process
- Who influences their purchasing decisions?
- What factors do they consider when making a purchase?
- What are their objections to purchasing your product/service?
- What is their preferred method of communication with brands?
6. Product-Specific Questions
- How do they use products/services like yours?
- What features are most important to them in a product/service?
- What benefits do they seek from your product/service?
- What previous experience do they have with products/services like yours?
7. Information Sources
- Where do they get information about products/services like yours?
- What websites, blogs, or forums do they visit?
- Do they attend industry events or trade shows?
- Do they rely on word-of-mouth recommendations?
8. Customer Journey
- How did they first become aware of your product/service?
- What steps do they take from awareness to purchase?
- How do they prefer to make a purchase? (Online, in-store)
- What post-purchase support do they expect?
Try using this method. These sets of questions will help you better understand your ideal customer and create detailed customer personas. All this will help you upgrade your marketing, product development, and customer service strategies.
#createICP, #customerpersona, #idealclient, #customerportrait, #buildcustomerprofile
Here are some resources for you to look up:
BD&C - Business Development & Consulting 
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