Every company is about the choices they make. Depending on how teams interact with each other and customers makes the team efficient. Creating a customer profile is the first step for building marketing campaigns, making customer success strategies work, and understand customers better. One thing every company needs to know is customer information. To get that information, you need customer profiles.
Ideally, customer profiles tell you everything about the potential people you want to make your customers. Customer profile is similar to buyer persona but it’s in fact more real. It has all the information about a potential customer base like-
- Buying behaviour
- Demographics
- Interactions
- Income
- Interests
- Business size
Customer profiles will make it easier to create the right decisions. Having a customer profile will help sales teams understand the product better. A customer profile should also include their hobbies and specific interests.
Benefits of Customer Profiles
Customer profiles have been noted as important or extremely important as per research including 99 % of marketers.
Easy to find leads
It is easier for sales teams to find leads as customer information is already available. They can contact the right people and generate leads who fit the same criteria. This data will help sales teams mine the best customers. This is a long-term strategy that will help customers get exactly what they want.
Improves account-based marketing
Personalization is important for any customer success strategy. For that, it is important to keep customer profiles in mind. Customer profiling will ensure that when communication is sent, it is right. It is best for large size accounts where it is impossible for sales accounts to learn about every customer. To prove that buyer needs can be met by products, it is important to have what they prefer.
New targets can be qualified
By nurturing customers whose profiles fit the products, it is easier to get new leads. If even a percent of customers convert, it is due to customer profiling. Since you know the exact traits of the customer, it is easier to get hem onboard. The needs are known making it easier for sales teams to contact them.
Align teams with customers
Customer profiles are helpful in creating alignment across the company. Aligning sales, marketing, development, and customer success is possible via customer profiling to get better results. This qualitative information can help making content and teams aligned to customers.
Like what you are reading?
Sign up for our newsletter
How to create the Customer Profile that helps your company
Customer profiles need to be accurate. They should not be based on guess work. Customer profiles need to be accurate to gain a comprehensive view of customer lining. Customer profiles need to have complete information about the customers. If any important data points are missed, it is tough to construct a customer profile.
Check with your sales team
Ask your sales team about customers. They are a great resource to know about customers. Their insights can be helpful for sales teams. With their help, you can understand the motivations, traits and behaviours of people.
Figure out analytics
Website analytics are a great way to get data about customers. Analytics will help us understand basic information about the age, location, gender, device, and more. Is the percentage of people split evenly or is it rough? Understand these metrics to get an idea of customers and their levels of interest.
Customer surveys
Another way to build customer profiles is by surveying customers. Voice of customer is a way to get feedback from customers via survey routes. Key questions like what problems they have, how they solved them, what influencers or methods they followed can help. Once that information is available, it is easier to dig through the data and form customer profiles.
Inspect and research them
Spending time researching customers and their traits is also important to build a customer profile. Using social media like twitter or LinkedIn can help you understand how customers talk. Inspect and introspect this data to get an idea of customer profiles.
Build the profile
With all the information you have about the customer, build their profiles so that it can be distributed and matched across teams. Try to understand which marketing channels you can pick for the personas. Make sure all the information is qualified to get the right details about the customer.
What is a good customer profile template?
A good and effective customer profile template is one that specifically describe the customer-his aspirations, needs of the customer, and marketing information.
Customer Profile Templates
Here are some template examples to give you an idea of how customer profiles can look
Template 1: The Customer
This is a personal customer profile describing their pain points, behaviour, interests, background, and more. This gives customer information to the point enabling sales teams and other teams to work in a related manner.
Template 2: The Demographic Split
Every customer is split based on their core values, demographics, and age range. It also has short information about the batch making it easier to advertise and sell to. With this, it is possible to target appropriately and reach customers well.
Template 3: Weighted Profiling
Theis customer profile is ranks prospects to see if they fit the business or not. These ranks will be useful in understanding if a certain sales pitch will work for this company or not. If the score meets what the customer is looking for, the team can proceed with a sales pitch.
Bottom Line
Customer profiles are needed for any sales or marketing team. They allow for better messaging, sales pitching personalisation, and improved chances of conversion. However, it is important to base customer profiles on real data and information rather than guesswork or estimates. This will help create a true buyer persona and nurture leads accordingly. By connecting with your customers on a deep level, it is possible to build a strong foundation that will give insights of value. Collating all customer information in a sorted manner will also improve the scope of finding patterns and uncovering useful insights.
Kruthan Appanna is a Customer Success Analyst with 5 years of experience. Passionate about leveraging data-driven insights to drive customer satisfaction and retention. Skilled in building strong client relationships and providing strategic solutions.
Published January 29, 2021, Updated June 07, 2023