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Health & Fitness

How to Learn About Your Ideal Customers

Knowing your target demographic is an essential part of building a successful business. It allows you to optimize your marketing and improve profits. Providing the goods and services that your customers want and convincing them to purchase new ones are both functions of knowing your customer. Learning about your customers is an ongoing process that begins before you open your business. There are many different ways you can learn about your customers, each with different benefits. A diverse, comprehensive approach is best when it comes to these techniques. Let’s take a closer look at some of the ways to get the right information about your ideal customer.

Professional demographics reports are available for many regions, and they are a great place to begin your research. They can help guide you through a lot of the early decisions when you begin thinking about your ideal customer. There are many benefits to utilizing professional reports. They are developed according to a proven and refined system. They frequently cover a wide range of information about population, which is also helpful when it comes to selecting supplementary research methods. Income ranges are commonly included; these are essential when it comes to location selection and pricing. While demographics reports can offer a great jumping off point, they can't tell you everything. Market research is another example of professional information that is available. Where demographics reports provide data, market research provides insight into the trends and habits of the specific demographics you wish to cater to. The benefits are similar, and these types of reports complement each other well.

Learning about your customers should not be done solely through reports. You and your employees have the opportunity to interact with customers and request feedback. Reports provide a lot of very essential information and they represent a lot of research, but practical application is important as well. Internal sales data can provide valuable information about seasonal shifts in spending from your customers and their responses to promotions. You can use information volunteered by customers with surveys through mailing lists and promotions to provide additional context about what portions of the market you are connecting with.

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Another great way to learn about your customers is to take to social media. Ask your fans and followers great questions about the kinds of products and services they would like to see from you. Provide links to surveys, run contests giving them an incentive to answer some questions, and find other creative ways to get the answers from your customers that you’re seeking. This information is so powerful because it’s all happening now, in real time, and can give you immediate insight into what your customers want. 

There is no singular way to learn about your customers, but there are plenty of great options. Balancing professional and personal research allows you to get a great picture of who your customers are and what they like. Ultimately, your customers are the ones that make the decisions whether or not to buy your products and use your services.  If you understand their wants, needs and desires, then you can provide the solutions that will have them doing business with you!

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