Every time I go through this process with a client, I’m amazed at how well it works. It’s easy to overlook this simple idea, or to brush it off as nothing new. Yeah, yeah, we’ve heard of that, now let’s get into the meaty strategic stuff. Let’s not waste our time on that airy fairy mumbo jumbo.

You know what I’m talking about — the ideal customer exercise. The one where you try to narrow down your target market to one representative individual and assign characteristics, like gender, age, family situation, job description, income level, the car they drive, the magazines they read, where they shop, what pressures they have, and what their goals are. It really is just as simple as it sounds, but every time I do it with a client, especially with a representative group from the client company, amazing and relevant insights emerge.

A real understanding of the needs of the market starts to sneak into the conversation. Light bulbs go off. Looking at the portrait we’ve developed on the flip chart in front of us, suddenly we feel closer to our customers, we understand them a little bit better, we feel more focused about how to reach them, about how to assist them instead of just trying to sell to them.

What do you think? Does it work for you too?

[tags]ideal customer, target market[/tags]

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This entry was posted on Sunday, September 30th, 2007 at 8:36 pm and is filed under Tactics and Techniques. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.