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Each of us uses the principles of psychology every day and probably don’t even realize we are doing it. For example, when we get nervous right before giving that big speech, we activate our autonomic nervous system. When we talk to ourselves in our minds, telling ourselves to “calm down,” “work better and harder,” or “give up,” we are utilizing cognitive approaches to change our emotions and behaviors. When a child is disciplined for doing something wrong, we utilize the learning principle of punishment. What is so important about understanding human emotions, behavior, and the mind of what we learn in most required college courses in Psych 101? What advantage does this knowledge lend itself to a business professional?

It is simple-psychologists not only spend their time helping people with their problems, they perform research to better understand why people react and behave the way they do. Industrial-organizational psychologists work with companies and organizations to determine ways to make them more productive and to improve relationships in the workplace. We use the same principles of psychology every day to determine who the target audiences are for our own business.

Who Are Your Customers, Really?

Here are 5 critical characteristics to help you understand who your customers are.

1.    Behavior

These are variables such as benefit sought, consumer attitude, loyalty rate, occasion, readiness stage, user rate and user status,  They include amount of purchase, cost, frequency of purchase, loyalty, time of year, time involved in purchasing decision, and where customers purchase the product.

2.    Demographic

These are the basic identifiable characteristics of individual consumers and organizational consumers and groups of consumers and organizational consumers. Demographics are often used as “segmentation” bases that define groups of people or organizations, with similar demographics that often have similar needs and desires that are distinct from those with different backgrounds. These include: age, education level, family size, gender, income level, marital status, occupation, race, religion, and other pertinent information.

3.    Geographic

This describes the basic identifiable characteristics of cities, countries, regions, states, and towns. One or a combination of these factors such as climate, competition, cost of living, density, growth pattern, legislation, location, media, operations, size, and transportation network may comprise for an identifiable location.

4.    Psychographic

These are any attributes relating to attitudes, interests, lifestyles, personality or values. They are characteristics like experience brand loyalty, family life cycle, innovativeness, lifestyle, opinion, perceived risk, personality and motives, social class, and usage rate that determine how a customer thinks of themselves relative to others.

5.    Linguistic

This is the way language varies in the communities of customers. This is where you look in particular at the interaction of social factors (such as a age, degree of integration into their community, ethnicity, gender, etc) and linguistic structures (such as grammatical forms, intonation features, sounds, words, etc). They also include key words, key phrases, misspellings, along with regional differences in spelling and pronunciation.

How do you know who your target customers are? How well do you really know them? Do they browse and buy on impulse or buy only what they need and want? Does the customer shop alone or with coworkers, friends, and family (who might influence their purchases)? Are they brand loyal? Do they shop online or just research on the Web to find the best price? And how much money do they have to spend? Understanding how your target audience thinks before buying is key. Making money in a small business is important, but truly understanding the customer’s way of thinking will make or break business growth.

How aware are customers of your brand or business compared to your competition? First, identify how the customers know about you. The prospective customer is made aware of your product or service through:

• Advertising
• Face-to-face marketing
• Reading a review or article of your company
• Referral from a friend or colleague
• Search engines
• Social media (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and many more)
• Trade shows and events
• Viral marketing

Over the past decade, Web sites are an integral part of marketing success. Customers visit Web sites to get a sense of what a business is about and learn as much as they can about the product or services being offered. Content on a Web site should build trust or the prospective customer will quickly leave and never return. In doing this, a Web site should answer questions that the consumer has, and have content written for them and not just about who you are, what you do, and how you do it. Having a “call to action” on every product or service page helps visitors know how to proceed to the next step.

If you are offering a reasonably high-priced product or service on the Web site, the prospective customer will make contact with the company by e-mail, live chat (if offered), phone, social media, and text (if offered). This contact may be to get a genuine question answered, but is an important stage for the trust-building process. Customers want to know whether there are real people behind the Web site visited. How quickly will they get a response? How well will their question be answered? Do you understand what they want? Are you listening to their questions and concerns?

Today’s customers are active in and informed about the buying process. They conduct Internet research to see what OTHER people are saying about you, your products or services, and your business. You have no control over what will be found. If the majority of articles, blog posts, comments, reviews and testimonials (written or video), are positive, this will greatly increase the chance of getting a sale.  If the majority of information found is negative, you can almost certainly kiss that future customer good-bye. To be in the race, a company’s Web site with products and services needs to be highly visible on the Internet. The content on a Web site has to build trust with the visitors. If someone visits a company’s Web site, they expect a prompt and courteous response that shows professionalism to all queries. Your reputation on the Internet must be positive and the products or service offered MUST be of quality. These points can be boiled down into understanding how your brand and reputation are created on the Web. The formula is simple.

Web Presence/Credibility + Product Quality + Support = Reputation/Brand

If these three elements are not in place, businesses will struggle to have a long-term future. If they are all in place, along with having a good online reputation, your business can grow rapidly through word of mouth. Finally, the customer has done the research and brings together everything he or she has learned and makes a decision. The choices are:

• Buy your company’s product or service
• Buy a competitor’s product or service
• Buy nothing and stay on the fence about the buying decision which usually means the customer did not get an answer to a need.

Understanding customers is so important that large corporations spend millions of dollars annually on market research to gain this knowledge. Although formal research is important, a small business can usually avoid this expense. Typically, the owner or manager of a small business knows the customers personally, which is an added value advantage. From this personal foundation,  understanding your customers can be built through systematic efforts such as processes in which to respond to customer queries, automated responders that are sent out and a telephone call follow up process in place and the like.

DJ Heckes, Author & CEO
EXHIB-IT! Tradeshow Marketing Experts
www.exhib-it.com
Full BRAIN Marketing
www.fullbrainmarketing.com