What is a Customer Profile?
A customer profile is a detailed description of the traits and characteristics comprising a business's target customer. Profiles are created using insights into the behavior and preferences of their audience. With this information, businesses can better understand what their customers are like. They can then make better-informed decisions whether it's creating more relevant marketing campaigns or more engaging user experiences.
Types of Customer Profiling
Creating effective customer profiles requires collecting the right types of data. This will allow you to accurately segment your audience based on relevant characteristics. Here are some of the common data types to use for customer profiling:
Demographic
Demographic profiling looks at the fixed personal traits of your customers. Using common demographics data, customers are grouped by attributes like:
- Age
- Gender
- Job title
- Income
- Education level
Geographic
Geographic profiling considers location-based factors. This can involve classifying customers based on the following:
- City
- Country
- Region
- Area
Behavioral
Behavioral profiling looks at the behavioral traits that influence how an individual engages with your business. Some of this behavioral data can include:
- Brand interactions
- Purchasing habits
- Visit frequency
- Average order value (AOV)
- Preferred product categories
Psychographic
Psychographic profiling focuses on the individual traits that impact “why” someone chooses to buy from your business. Psychographic traits may include:
- Lifestyle
- Values
- Interests
- Habits
- Goals
How to Create an Ideal Customer Profile
Here is a quick overview of how you can create profiles for your ideal target customers.
1. Find Your Highest-Value Customers
The best first step for crafting customer profiles is to study your existing customer base to find your highest-value customers. These individuals have already proven to be valuable revenue drivers for your business. As such, studying their underlying characteristics will help you uncover commonalities among your best segments.
2. Identify Common Traits
When analyzing your top existing customers, identify patterns in demographics and behaviors that you can use for creating a descriptive customer profile. For example, you could notice that many of your best customers are in a similar age bracket. Or, they could have a common pattern of frequently visiting a particular product category.
3. Collect Data and Customer Feedback
Next, you’ll want to collect data from your audience. This will help you understand the common traits among different segments of your audience. You can use analytics tools, surveys, and customer feedback to gather information. For example, the analytics section of the Rep AI dashboard can tell you what types of chat conversations are most common and why users disengage from your site. With this information, you can identify common pain points and main interest areas within your audience.
4. Segment Your Customers
With a detailed understanding of your audience, you can group customers with similar traits into distinct segments. For example, you might separate heavy discount users from premium shoppers.
5. Build Personas
Once your audience segments are in place, you can start developing personas for the different customer groups. This will involve using the attributes you uncovered to create fictional yet realistic representations of your ideal customers. The common approach is to create a “Jane Doe” or template user profile that includes details such as goals, challenges, and preferred shopping channels.
