The Customer Demographics Questions
Have you ever offered your product or service to the wrong people, or at the wrong time? Answering three important customer demographics questions: who, what, and when – is essential to the survival of your business.
What is the best way to answer these questions?
What Are Customer Demographics?
Demographics are the process of describing, measuring, and putting people into categories. Why is this significant? Certain categories of people are more likely to buy your products or services. Instead of wasting money on marketing to everybody, you should only focus on the categories of people who are your most likely buyers.
Who’s buying what?
For example, which gender will buy more issues of the magazine Men’s Health? Which gender will buy more women’s hoodies? Which age group is most likely to want hearing aids? What about skateboards? Which income group is more likely to buy luxury cars?
How To Find YOUR Demographics
A small business with 10 customers has only limited information. Will all their future customers be similar to those existing 10? Or might they find a whole new market with people totally unlike their 10 customers?
Even if you have only one customer, they can be useful in extrapolating and predicting what more customers will be like and what they will want. Even with one buyer, it’s possible to make a “buyer persona,” or a list of characteristics that your ideal customer possesses.
However, the more people you already have information about, the more accurately you can target your offers.
A Customer Demographics Tip
This is exactly what you want to do: make your offers more accurately targeted. The more specific you are, the more sales you’ll make.
For example, which will people buy more of? Will it be a package that simply says “dog food” or a package with wet food for Chihuahuas over 10 years old?
True, there are far more people who want dog food than some specific Chihuahua food. However, if you only sell generic dog food, you’re competing with all the other generic sellers out there – and you’ll sell less.
You’ll sell far, far more by being specific
That’s why you want to know people’s addresses, income levels, political preferences, hobbies, interests, marital status, religious beliefs, and even their brand of cell phone. All of these factors can strongly affect people’s buying decisions, and you want to make sure you’re targeting exactly the right people.
Not only “Who” and “What,” but also “When”
For example, more people might stop by coffee shops on Thursdays than on Mondays. Not only that, but more of these people stop at certain shops than at others. If you sell coffee in the area, how could knowing this help you?
The inertia of one company’s marketing efforts can affect the timing of others in their industry. In October 1933, the White Star Cafeteria started running ads in the El Paso Herald-Post that they were selling tacos on Tuesdays. Fast forward to today and you’ll find that in many places, restaurants still sell more tacos on Tuesdays than on other days of the week.
Yet timing your offers is not just about days of the week. Think of the important events in someone’s life. If a family all of a sudden starts buying diapers, what else might they likely buy? If they just moved into a house, what are some big purchases they might be making?
Experienced marketers can provide you with Insight Reports – descriptions of your customers’ behaviors and key demographics. This is how you can quickly understand your audience, successfully guide your clients, and even learn more about your competitors.
If you want to know how insight reports and look-alike audiences can boost YOUR marketing, go ahead and get in touch with us today!
