Who is your customer?

I had the absolute pleasure of working with an inspired client recently and the conversation turned to a key question for all businesses. Namely "who is my customer". Most businesses start out to fulfill a need or provide a service but rarely do we take the strategic step of sitting back and thinking about who our desired market actually is. There is little point in trying to be everything to everyone as we end up confused and unfocussed in our delivery of our products and services.

To approach our business strategically with the intention of unlocking value we should identify our primary customer segment. This defining question focusses in on who is using our product or service. Businesses are successful when they help a customer to solve a problem and the end user of our products are the people whose problems we solve.

Taking time to think about the needs of that end user can help us to refine our value proposition and to drive better solutions. It is a doorway to innovation and to a better quality of business which promotes longevity and improved owner returns.

So how do we define our primary customer? Its not always useful to default to a demographic or sector of society ( although this may form apart of the analysis). Instead a couple of simple questions can help frame up the certainty of the customer profile.

1) What problems are my customers trying to solve?

2) What brings them to my store/website/stall?

3) What does my customer look like?

These questions can be further refined through a lens of age, gender, location, industry and interests.

This builds a picture or persona of your customer which can be kept front of mind when developing a marketing plan and when developing additional offerings within the business. Whether you have an engineering firm, a consultancy, retail or even a software company, having a customer view helps to target solutions to problems which our customers will value. Everything we do in business starts with a customer outcome, this is what truly drives growth.