Getting Inside Your Customers Heads

When you are in business, your task is to meet the wants, desires and needs of your customers. Easy!

This is much harder than it sounds. Each person is totally unique and if you look at their individual wants, desires and needs you will never be able to satisfy them all and you will go broke trying.

This is where statistics comes into play. If you get a large enough group together they will begin to form a statistically coherent pattern. You can use this pattern to gain a little glimpse into what is going on in your customer's heads. That is the purpose of things like census data - to look at big enough groups of people to help governments make appropriate policies.

Back at the turn of the century the statisticians looked at things such as demographics. Businesses worked out their best customers were all of a certain age, spent a certain amount of money, lived in certain areas, had certain jobs and visited certain shops.

Demographics were a great start to help us to segment our customers and to help us work out where we should target our marketing. Even today you will find print media will provide you with demographic data on their readership to help you make a decision about whether or not to advertise in their publication.

The problem with demographics is they don't take into account large variances within groups and they don't take into account the changes in how people view the world. 30 years ago you could look at a demographic profile and make a decision that if you wanted to reach businessmen of a certain income and age you should advertise in the Financial Review or Wall Street Journal.

These days people gather their information in a more varied way. With the internet people search for precisely what they want - they hang out with like-minded people and exchange ideas and information.

Readership of newspapers and magazines are dramatically down. TV viewing is down. Radio listeners are down. People go to their clan or their group to find information. Using demographic data as your sole way of making your decisions is not helpful to your business.

So what has replaced demographics? In recent times we have started to look at psychographic profiles. We work out the common things our best customers think, value and believe in.

Psychographics are where you start to look at why people do what they do. To do this you ask questions such as:
* What needs are your best customers looking to fulfil?
* What beliefs about themselves and the world do they hold?
* What inspires them?
* What problems do they have?
* What is similar in how they view the world?
* Where do they hang out?

Psychologists have been doing something similar for years when they look at tools to help profile people such as Myers Briggs, Team Management Index, and Belbin. All of these are ways of categorising ways people view and interact with the world.

Let's make this a bit more practical so you can see what role this plays in business and getting inside your customer's heads.

One client I have specialised in kitchen and bathroom renovations. We started with demographic data and found that 95% of all their clients were over the age of 40. They lived in their own home, were employed in white collar jobs earning a reasonable but not excessive income.

We then started to dig a bit further to look for similarities in their lives and how they viewed the world. All of them had raised their families and finally as the kids were getting a bit older they had some discretionary income that they chose to spend on themselves. "It was their turn" was a common saying among these clients when talking about their renovation. "They had put up with things for years and now they deserved something nice."

The one interesting thing was every single house was extremely messy and the clients apologised about the mess to the tradespeople.

So how did this translate into our marketing? Well we placed an emphasis on it being their turn and deserving nice things. We also made mention of the fear of people looking down their nose at your house and how the tradespeople the company used were real people who understand if the rest of the house wasn't in show perfect condition.

We also used pictures and colours that reflected the taste of their customers (and not some over the top flash designers).

Is this manipulation? No. We just looked at what was already there with their customer base and sought to understand their needs better.

The business wanted more customers just like the ones they had, so by directing our marketing to the psychographic profile of their best customers made it easier for customers to feel right at home with the company from the marketing. This translates to more sales from the right customers.

Now it's your turn to get inside your customers heads. Go back to your best customers ... the ones you truly love working for. What makes them so great? How do they view the world? What problems are they trying to solve by coming to you? What do they value? Where do they hang out?

While you are at it have a look inside at yourself. What makes you so great? How do you view the world? What problems do you love to solve? What are your values? Where do you hang out?

When your profile and your customer's profile are congruent, then your business booms. If you are in a state of flux and you are not clear on your own profile, then business can be challenging as you attract the wrong type of customers to your business.

Getting clear on your own profile and the profile of your ideal client makes marketing easier, selling easier and your life easier.


About the Author

Ingrid Cliff is a Freelance Copywriter with her Brisbane Copywriting Business (Heart Harmony). Ingrid writes a free weekly small business newsletter packed full of articles and tips and Small Business Ideas blog for small businesses. www.heartharmony.com.au

Relaited Links:

• How to write book reviews for your target audience.

Yellow Pages Ads For Small Business

When most small businesses start up they automatically think: "if I get a Yellow Pages ad all will be well".

The challenge is that over the past few years the way people search for businesses has changed. It used to be that whenever anyone wanted to find a business they went straight to the big yellow books. Now the majority of people will go to their computer first.

At the 2007 Microsoft Strategic Account Summit, Bill Gates predicted that within 5 years that no one under 50 would use the print Yellow Pages. Personally I think that this is a bit of a stretch by a few years, but it is certainly a trend to be aware of.

The main strength of the print version of the Yellow Pages is that you can find local businesses easily and quickly. In the past 12 months Google Maps has improved their offering to make finding a local business much easier on the net and are starting to eat away at the local advantage Yellow Pages had.

What does this mean for small business? Should you turf your Yellow Pages ad? Yellow Pages are just one part of your overall marketing strategy. You need to consider your total marketing plan for the year to make a sensible decision about what to do about the Yellow Pages.

In my opinion, even though their importance is declining, for some industries Yellow Pages for the next few years will still be a good source of leads and customers. So, how do you determine if the investment is a good one for you?

Step 1: Research

Before you make any decision on running a Yellow Pages ad, pick up a copy of the big yellow books for your area and look through your category listings. If there are only single line ads in your listing, you can pretty much bet that Yellow Pages are a waste of time for your industry. Take a look at Educational Consultants to give you an example of what I mean.

The sort of categories that still get a solid run from Yellow Pages are local services like computer repairers (people's computers will be not working when they are looking for a repair technician) and tradespeople If you are in a service based industry then generally yellow pages are not as relevant.

Step 2: Look at your own statistics

Look back over where your leads came from in the past year (you do ask people how they found you don't you?) Many businesses are finding a declining trend in leads from the Yellow Pages and an increase in the internet referrals. If you have statistics, review them and use them to help make your decision based on fact not gut feel.

Step 3: Look at Return on Investment

Yellow Pages are an extremely expensive form of advertising. Even just the addition of your website address can to your line listing can cost you $200. Display ads run to the thousands of dollars. Just like any form of advertising you need to look at your return on your investment - how much do you need to earn to cover the cost of your ads? Are you getting sufficient sales to cover the cost of your ads?

A number of smaller businesses are scaling down the size of their ads and are investing this money back into Search Engine Optimisation or website content rewrites by SEO copywriters to help them get better positions on search engines like Google.

Step 4: Display ads are better than in column ads

If all of the numbers add up from your research know that display ads are more effective than column ads. They grab attention and are not lost in a series of black lines. To choose the right display ad for your business, go back to your initial research- go for the biggest display ad your ROI tells you will work for your business.

Step 5: Get your words right

Writing a Yellow Pages ad is an art form. If you make a mistake in your words you have to live with the consequences for a full 12 months before you can change them. Here are some tips to get your words right:

Your headline is vital! The first thing you want people to read is something to grab a reader's attention to make them want to read more. It has to be something that flags down their particular need or exactly what you are looking for. Your company name is NEVER exciting, nor is a boring headline that doesn't differentiate you from anyone else.

Here are some headlines from the air-conditioning section. Which ad would you read more of "Total comfort solutions"; "Excel air-conditioning", "Brisbane's cheapest prices"; "Climatrol air-conditioning" or "Quality Ducted and Split Systems"?

None of these headlines are particularly brilliant, but the ones that come close are the ones on price which will attract price shoppers or the one on ducted and split systems as it tells you precisely what makes them different.

If you have time and are serious about getting results, then use Google Adwords to test your headlines to get the one with maximum results before you finalise your Yellow Pages ad.

Your body text is also very important. Your body text needs to be short, sharp and snappy. It has to highlight exactly what people are looking for and address key things people are looking for (and any problems people want to avoid).

The Ducted ad has a line "installation by qualified tradesman, no subcontractors". This is great if people are worried that a sub-contractor may botch the installation. In comparison look at "Climatrol has served SE Queensland for over 20 years". Unless business longevity is important to you, then a quick chorus of "who cares" rings out in your head when you read this ad. They may be in business for that long ... but are they any good?

Call to action. You have to make it crystal clear what you want people to do once they have read your ad. You need a clear call to action. "Call xxxx xxxx now for an obligation free quote", "Visit our showroom at XXXXX". Just putting in your number will reduce your response rate.

Make the number stand out. If it is just included in your text you will create confusion, this also goes for if you include a Fax number. If you must include a fax number, keep it small and inconspicuous to reduce the number of people dialling it by mistake.

Step 6: Get your design right

As lovely as the Yellow Pages designers are, if you are serious about getting results you need to invest in professional graphic design rather than have Yellow Pages do it for you.

Professional designers get the right font, make your number very clear and readable, will not overload the design and know what colours work when printed on yellow pages to give the best impact.

Many photos look blurry when printed on yellow newspaper, so you have to get it right the first time or your whole ad will be an expensive waste of money.

Step 7: Use your content for other purposes

Once you have your Yellow Pages ad sorted, use the same content and drop it into on-line community directories and Google Maps. Make sure your website reflects your ad content so when people check you out on-line there is no disconnect between what they read in your ad and what they see online.

Yellow Pages ads are still useful for many small businesses. If you follow these 7 steps you will get the best possible results from your ads.


About the Author

Ingrid Cliff is a Freelance Copywriter with her Brisbane Copywriting Company, Heart Harmony that helps put businesses into words. Ingrid writes a free weekly newsletter packed full of articles and tips to help your business grow and Small Business Ideas blog for small businesses.www.heartharmony.com.au

Relaited Links:

• How To Increase Link Popularity On Your Website