Customer Profiling: Methods to Understanding Your Customers

Understanding customers is critical to your business' success and survival. Here's why and how to improve your understanding of your customers.

Why understanding customers is critical to your business

Understanding your customers helps you provide better service and identify your target group of customers. Failing to identify the target group makes it difficult to promote your products.

Therefore, it is necessary to find out what kind of customers will actually be interested in the services or products you have to offer.

Ways to Understand Customers

Affinity Profiling

Through this method, you study the buying habits of people in order to determine what kinds of products a particular customer requires. Thus, if you come across someone who buys lots of books, literature, and stationery, there is a good chance that they are in the teaching business and perhaps may be interested in buying more educational products.

Demographic Profiling

Business experts emphasize using a demographic profile to understand what kind of products click with a particular customer. Through demographic profiling, you can look into various details such as geographical location, marital status, and educational qualifications of a person to figure it what you can sell to them.

For instance, a man who has children and an impressive salary may be more interested in buying an overseas vacation package than a single man who is barely able to manage his daily expenses.

Psychological Profiling

Psychological profiling can be used to tell a lot about a person by understanding their psychological motivations. For example, when you see a person driving a BMW and wearing designer clothes, it’s easy to guess that they love status symbols. Obviously, if you are selling an Armani watch, they would be a person who would want to buy it.

Lifestyle Coding

Lifestyle coding helps you to understand the way a person leads their life by looking at their hobbies and habits. For instance, if you come across a person who loves racing, they are also likely to be interested in vintage cars and stylish car accessories.

Cluster Coding

Class and social activities are closely linked, and a person who earns a very good salary and works for a multinational company is likely to be interested in formal clothes, laptop computers, PDAs and cell phones. Cluster coding helps you to understand what class a person belongs to and how it affects their lifestyle and preferences.

No matter what kind of business you are in, understanding your customers’ needs can help you to serve them better. Know what they expect from you so you don’t disappoint them with your product offerings.

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