How to Target Your Perfect Customer

The most impor­tant part of your copy is not your head­line, not your offer and cer­tainly not your ben­e­fits. The most impor­tant part is your customer.

In the last few weeks, I’ve been cri­tiquing some pretty good copy. Very well-​​written and com­pelling. But if the con­ver­sion rate is low (hence, the rea­son why I was hired to con­duct a cri­tique con­sul­ta­tion), it’s because these saleslet­ters do not tar­get the right audi­ence for the offer, or the author and the copy fail to con­nect with their readers.

Research­ing your cus­tomer in depth is vital to the suc­cess of your copy. It’s not only an impor­tant com­po­nent of tar­get­ing and qual­i­fy­ing the best prospect for your offer, but also an effec­tive way to dis­cover new ideas, dif­fer­ent angles, cap­ti­vat­ing sto­ry­lines, unsought ben­e­fits, and appro­pri­ate length and lan­guage of your copy that will con­vert more.

If you have done enough research to know your prod­uct is viable, then tar­get­ing and con­nect­ing with your mar­ket as much as pos­si­ble should be the obvi­ous next step. How­ever, this is where many mar­keters fail, for they are try­ing to be “all things to all peo­ple” and attempt to mar­ket their prod­uct to everyone.

Instead, try to dis­cover the qual­i­ties, char­ac­ter­is­tics and behav­ioral pat­terns of your spe­cific (or great­est) mar­ket. Your niche. Then mar­ket to that audi­ence more than any other and as often as pos­si­ble. These usu­ally fall into four main categories.

The best copy­writ­ers in the world who have writ­ten multi-​​million dol­lar saleslet­ters and ads are usu­ally those who have spent a great many hours inter­view­ing clients, spend­ing time learn­ing about them (maybe even to be with them), ask­ing a lot of ques­tions, and spend­ing a lot of time learn­ing about:

• Geo­graph­ics
• Demo­graph­ics
• Psy­cho­graph­ics
• Techno­graph­ics

Empathy Starts With Discovery

It was Ken Blan­chard, in the One-​​Minute Sales Man­ager, who said: “Before I walk a mile in your shoes, I must first take off my own.” Brian Keith Voiles, in an inter­view I gave him regard­ing the power of empa­thy in copy, said it best:

“The first thing I do is try to live a “day in the life” of my prospect. What keeps him up at night? What are his biggest con­cerns or his biggest joys? What’s the first thing he does in the morn­ing as he wakes up? Does he read the paper? What kind of paper? What sec­tions? Does he hurt? Is he frus­trated? About what? In all, I try to put myself in my prospect’s shoes as much as pos­si­ble and really try to see what he sees, thinks what he thinks, feels what he feels. The more I do, the more empa­thetic I am in my copy — and the more I sell.”

Demo­graph­ics are the basic qual­i­ties and char­ac­ter­is­tics of your mar­ket. They include age, gen­der, cul­ture, employ­ment, indus­try, income level, mar­i­tal sta­tus, and so on. Does your prod­uct cater uniquely to women? Is it more appeal­ing to a spe­cific indus­try? Does your prod­uct com­ple­ment another type of product?

Geo­graph­ics are the coun­tries, loca­tions and estab­lish­ments in which your tar­get mar­ket resides or works, or those it fre­quents or to which it trav­els. Is your mar­ket made up of French Cana­di­ans? Does your prod­uct cater to a mar­ket from a cer­tain state that is pre­dom­i­nantly of a cer­tain reli­gious or polit­i­cal per­sua­sion? Are they urban­ites or rural folk?

On the other hand, psy­cho­graph­ics are made up of the emo­tional and behav­ioral qual­i­ties of your mar­ket. They include the emo­tions, buy­ing pat­terns, pur­chase his­to­ries, and even thought processes behind people’s deci­sion to buy your product.

For exam­ple, they include events they attend, inter­ests and hob­bies in which they’re engaged, asso­ci­a­tions to which they belong, pre­vi­ous pur­chases made, other related prod­ucts your mar­ket has con­sumed, and length of time they remained with a par­tic­u­lar company.

Finally, a new cat­e­gory, recently defined by For­rester Research, includes people’s affec­tion or aver­sion towards tech­nol­ogy. Are they early adopters? Do they use gad­gets such as Black­ber­ries and cell­phones? Or at least do they own a com­puter? Do they surf the web and buy online? Or do they pre­fer to con­sum­mate the sale offline?

Bot­tom line, who buys from you specifically?

If you were to say “every­one,” then you are falling in the trap men­tioned ear­lier. Avoid it as much as you can. Try to be as spe­cific as pos­si­ble. But if you do cater to a diverse mar­ket, find out who buys from you the most or the most often.

Intelligence Gathering

The two most impor­tant ele­ments are, of course, demo­graph­ics and psy­cho­graph­ics. In other words, demo­graph­ics include the seg­ment of the pop­u­la­tion that needs your prod­uct, while psy­cho­graph­ics are those within your demo­graph­ics that want your prod­uct.

If you don’t know this, you can eas­ily con­duct a sur­vey as part of a mar­ket­ing research cam­paign among your cur­rent clients, poten­tial clients and clients of other sim­i­lar prod­ucts or com­pa­nies. Don’t under­es­ti­mate your great­est source for mar­ket­ing research — clients!

For exam­ple, here’s a list of ques­tions you should ask:

• Who, exactly, is your per­fect customer?
• What’s a day in the life of your per­fect cus­tomer like?
• Why did they buy your prod­uct? If not, why not?
• Why did they buy from you or your com­peti­tor specifically?
• Why did they not buy from you or the competition?
• Why did they buy from you at that spe­cific point in time?
• Why did they buy right away (on impulse) or took their time?
• If they shopped around, why did they? Where did they go?
• What do they like the most and the least about the product?
• Would they refer you to oth­ers? Why? If not, why not?
• What spe­cific ben­e­fits do they see in your product?
• What spe­cific ben­e­fits do they see in your competitor’s product?
• And so on.

These are immensely impor­tant ques­tions that can help you, guide you, or even cause you to change your approach alto­gether. Don’t dis­count the power of doing mar­ket­ing research, espe­cially within your own back­yard. You want to know not only who buys from you but, more impor­tant, why they do. In other words, think psy­cho­graph­ics and not just demographics.

To illus­trate the dif­fer­ence between demo­graph­ics and psy­cho­graph­ics, here’s an exam­ple pulled from my own expe­ri­ence as a copy­writer in the cos­metic surgery field.

Hair trans­plant doc­tors cater mainly to men who have expe­ri­enced hair loss and are able to afford such an oper­a­tion — i.e., men and bald men specif­i­cally are poten­tial patients because they may need of more hair. Psy­cho­graph­ics, on the other hand, go a lit­tle fur­ther. In this exam­ple, they are com­prised of men who not only need but also want more hair — since not all of them do. (It’s a mat­ter of pri­or­i­ties, just as the type of cloth­ing one chooses to wear).

There­fore, in order to tar­get this mar­ket as pre­cisely as pos­si­ble and thus gen­er­ate bet­ter leads, doc­tors must take the psy­cho­graphic ele­ment into account, such as their patients’ lifestyle, their inter­ests, the type of indus­try in which they work (since cer­tain indus­tries are image-​​related), as well as their pre­vi­ous buy­ing habits (such as men who have already invested in other forms of hair replace­ment solu­tions) — the more infor­ma­tion the better.

For exam­ple, you have a head­line that said, “Are you los­ing your hair?” That appeals to your demo­graph­ics. Peo­ple who have hair­loss will prob­a­bly read the ad. Prob­lem is, they may not care about it. But if your head­line said, “Suf­fer­ing from hair­loss?” now your ad is tar­get­ing some­one who not only has hair­loss but also cares about it enough to want to do some­thing about it.

Aim For The Bull's-Eye

Nev­er­the­less, arm your­self with as much of this type of infor­ma­tion before­hand and your chances of achiev­ing greater suc­cess with your prod­uct will be vir­tu­ally guar­an­teed. While you can’t be every­thing to every­one, you shouldn’t be tar­get­ing every­one for everything.

The fol­low­ing rep­re­sents the Suc­cess Doc­tor’s Mar­ket Tar­get­ing Model (a for­mat to fol­low when tar­get­ing an audi­ence, or while engaged in any tar­get­ing activ­ity). It’s in the form of three con­cen­tric cir­cles, like a bull’s-eye, as follows:

Apply­ing the tar­get­ing model is sim­ple. Each cir­cle rep­re­sents a dif­fer­ent level in the tar­get­ing process — the cen­ter being the first and so on. As the adage goes, “fish where the fish swim.” Find places, events or pub­li­ca­tions that meet any of the three.

The bull’s-eye, the cen­ter, which are things that directly and specif­i­cally involve your “per­fect cus­tomer,” should be your main aim at all times. The sec­ond level are things that are related to them. The third level, while not related, are things that are ori­ented towards your per­fect cus­tomer. Here’s a quick descrip­tion of each circle:

• The Cen­ter (Bull’s-Eye): It’s what per­tains directly to your tar­get mar­ket. In other words, it’s any­thing that meets your per­fect cus­tomer pro­file (and does so imme­di­ately and as specif­i­cally as pos­si­ble). Things like demo­graph­ics, psy­cho­graph­ics and geo­graph­ics are included.
   
• The Sec­ond Tier (Mid­dle Layer): It’s what per­tains indi­rectly to your tar­get mar­ket. Stated dif­fer­ently, it’s any­thing that relates to or log­i­cally fits in your per­fect cus­tomer pro­file. This includes things such as direct com­peti­tors, com­ple­men­tary prod­ucts, related indus­tries, etc.
   
• The Third Tier (Out­side Layer): It’s what does not per­tain at all to your tar­get mar­ket but some­how matches or is ori­ented towards any of its areas. Exam­ples are unre­lated indus­tries with which your cus­tomer is asso­ci­ated, other busi­nesses patron­ized by your cus­tomer, other unre­lated prod­ucts they con­sume (prod­ucts that do not com­ple­ment, replace or super­sede yours, but are con­sumed by them), com­mon threads among your audi­ence (even if they have noth­ing to do with your prod­uct), etc.

Here's An Example

Here’s a real-​​life exam­ple. Let’s say you’re in the com­puter sales busi­ness. Your per­fect cus­tomer is a per­son aged between 20 and 35, earn­ing around $30,000, liv­ing in the east­ern part of the United States and work­ing in the high-​​tech field.

The cen­ter or bull’s-eye would include computer-​​related mag­a­zines, shows, web­sites, tradeshows, ezines and direc­to­ries, among other types of media — wher­ever your per­fect cus­tomer is tar­geted, based on the qual­i­ties and char­ac­ter­is­tics of your prod­uct or cus­tomer, should be your first goal.

The sec­ond tier are areas that are indi­rectly related to your per­fect cus­tomer. Your goal would then be to tar­get mar­kets that are sim­i­lar to your own or some­how log­i­cally fit into your tar­get mar­ket as well — in short, other related pub­li­ca­tions, busi­nesses or areas that tar­get your per­fect cus­tomer, too.

Areas include soft­ware mag­a­zines, trade pub­li­ca­tions, tech­nol­ogy web­sites, indus­try asso­ci­a­tions, non-​​competing busi­nesses, etc. An exam­ple would be other web­sites sell­ing com­puter periph­er­als or soft­ware your per­fect cus­tomer would need or enjoy, such as an account­ing soft­ware package.

The third and final tier con­sist of totally unre­lated areas your per­fect cus­tomer fre­quents, with­out any­thing to do with your indus­try. You want to be in front of as many of their eye­balls as pos­si­ble, even if where you appear has any­thing to do with your prod­uct, indus­try or niche.

Let’s say, through some research, you found that a large per­cent­age of your tar­get mar­ket are cof­fee drinkers. Then areas you would seek are, for exam­ple, coffee-​​related web­sites, spe­cialty cof­fee mag­a­zines, cof­fee prod­uct stores (e.g., cof­fee maker com­pa­nies, mugs, espresso machines, etc), restau­rants, books on cof­fee and so on.

It means that, as long as the audi­ences of such web­sites and pub­li­ca­tions log­i­cally fit into your tar­get mar­ket some­how, even if, in this case, they have noth­ing to do with com­put­ers at all, then you’ve got it made. In essence, you’re still within your “bulls­eye,” in other words.

The bot­tom line is, in order to con­vert at a much higher rate, you need to be in front of the right peo­ple as often as pos­si­ble. You not only need to know who your per­fect cus­tomer is, but you also need to under­stand her, con­nect with her and empathize with her.

As Robert Col­lier said in his book, The Robert Col­lier Let­ter Book, you need to con­tinue the con­ver­sa­tion already going on in their minds. Or as Dan Kennedy often says, above all pay close atten­tion to “message-​​to-​​market match.”

About the Author

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