3 - Know your Customers

Welcome to our 2016 Advent Calendar! We are sharing a marketing tip or trick every day until Christmas. To make sure you receive these updates, don't forget to register here. Happy Christmas!

Knowing your customers is one of the most important aspects of sales and marketing. In order to gain new customers, if you're after a similar customer type, you'll need to know exactly who your current customers are!

Instead of sending out blanket communications, getting crystal clear about your ideal customer and applying segmentation increases the effectiveness of your marketing, whatever the channel.

Developing a customer or buyer persona can help you to identify their needs and behaviour and target accordingly. The persona represents your ideal customer based on research and 'owned' data. Considerations should include customer demographics, motivations, goals and behaviour patterns to name a few.

So get planning - Hubspot has a customer persona guide and template available for free download!

Top tip: Leave no stone unturned

Research everything about your target customer; from which social media pages they hang out on to their occupation and hobbies. Some people swear by putting on the shoes of their target customer (quite literally!), as the best way to understand and therefore target them.

Data taken from your own records such as Google Analytics, email software and Facebook or other social media profiles are just a few ways to gain great insight into your customer base.

Analyse your data thoroughly. Did you know, within Facebook alone there are at least four places where you can gain insight on your current customers?

That's all for today. Stay tuned for more tips and tricks from our free advent calendar.