The end of a year and the start of a new one is the perfect time to reflect on the past 12 months and consider new business opportunities. One of the best things to do during this time of year is research your business’s untapped target audience and use this research to set your target market stretch goal for 2018. The below tips will help you start 2018 utilising reflective insights to set goals for the year ahead.
1. Find the top 20% of your customers
Every business owner knows the importance of understanding customers’ wants and needs. However, generic audience information will only get you so far. To widen your audience without taking a blanket all approach will require you need to get more granular in your view of your existing customers. The first step and most important step is to find out who the top 20% of your customers are, as generally these are making you 80% of your profits.
2. Research your top customers
Once you have identified the top 20% of your customers, research them heavily. What makes them them? What do they want and need? Use this audience analysis to discover other people like these customers. A great way to dig further into your most profitable customers is to find out what these people are searching for online. To discover this information outside of your web analytics a great tool to use is web scraping. It’s a way to find out what people are searching for, as well as being a tool for staying on top of sales trends.
3. Create a detailed understand of these customers
Products can appeal to more than one type of person, and customers may be influenced by others during the purchase decision period. By understanding who is making and influencing the decision, the barriers and motivations creates a more focused and informed view of the customers that are most profitable to your business. The ultimate goal is to have a detailed understanding of these customers so you can find more of these customers and create a wider audience in 2018.
4. Gather enough information to try to duplicate these customer personas
One approach for increasing your target audience is to utilise online platforms such as social media to find new customers. Social media is certainly not the best platform for all target audiences, however the premise of this exercise is to find an online community or platform which your target audience is already using and use the data on it, filter and qualify these leads to match your ideal customer profile.
5. Use this data to target new prospects which fit your criteria
One way to do this is to qualify leads by searching or filtering the scraped data by keywords, or any other criteria you have from your top customers. Creating a steady flow of new prospects who are based on your most profitable customers, therefore increasing the likelihood of these prospects being profitable to your business in the future.
6. Continue to collect data and cleanse old data
Another great tip for 2018, is not to consider this process as a one off. Continue to track and update this customer persona profile, as it will lead to better and better insights. Information is power after all. It is beneficial to keep quality data, not just from a process perspective but also cost. Therefore another goal for 2018 is to keep your CRM system cleansed and updated at all times, set reminders to do this regularly so when it gets to the new year next year you can be proactive and assured that the information you hold is correct. Inspire, conquer and grow in 2018.“Preparation, I have often said, is rightly two-thirds of any venture” ~ Amelia Earhart.
Good luck.
