Profiling
Your Target Customer
Explore Customer Groups
chapter
4
Prepared by
Ron Knowles
Algonquin College
& Jennifer Rouse Barbeau
Canadore College
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Chapter Overview
Chapter 4 will:
chapter
4
 Help you begin collecting information to
understand, develop a profile of, and connect
with your target customer.
 Begin to formulate your market strategy.
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Learning Opportunities
chapter
4
 Understand that your key to survival in
small business is the target customer.
 Recognize three kinds of customer
groups.
 Use primary and secondary research to
profile your target customer.
 Match your target customer with what
he or she reads, watches, and listens to.
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Learning Opportunities
chapter
4
 Become more aware of and start being on
the look-out for potential partnerships,
alliances, and associations.
 Recognize the market and the target
customers who are about to surface.
 Research your prospective target
customers and refine your mission
statement.
 Visualize your business and target
customer.
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What is Customer
Relationship Marketing?
A Key Trend:
Customer Relationship Marketing
•
•
•
The development of long-term, mutually beneficial and
cost-effective relationships with your customer.
Emphasizes a market pull strategy:
 Determine what your target customer (TC) wants.
 Profile your target customer.
 Adapt or create a product or service to satisfy this
want or need.
Emphasizes a one-to-one marketing strategy.
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The Power of Profiling
Three types of customers:
1. Primary: The primary or target customer is most
likely to buy your product or service and could be a
heavy user.
2. Secondary: The secondary customer has a
possibility of buying your product or service but
needs convincing.
3. Invisible: The invisible customer is the one you
don’t anticipate but has a need for your product or
service. This customer appears after you open the
doors.
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Two Types of
Customer Profiles
1. Business to Consumer (B2C) or
End-User Profile

If your TC is the consumer or end-user, your
customer profile will likely require demographics
or psychographics.
2. Business-to-Business (B2B) Profile


Many small businesses offer their services or
products, often on a contract basis, to other
businesses.
These supply chain companies need a customer
profile that is based on business or companytype information.
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Demographics &
Psychographics
DEMOGRAPHICS
PSYCHOGRAPHICS
Key personal
characteristics of a
group of people.
Process of segmenting
the population by
lifestyles & values.
These include:
 Age
 Sex
 Family Status
 Age of Children
 Education
 Residence
These may include:
 Where they eat & shop
 Sporting activities
 Entertainment activities
 How socially & physically
active they are
 Whether they travel for
business or fun
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Psychographic Profiling
Chances are you will have to do
your own psychographic research.
Use Action Step 24 to get started:
 What is your VALS? Click on the SRI Consulting
Business Intelligence site.
 Profile your target customer using postal codes.
Link on to Generation 5.
 Do your own psychographic profiling. Invite a
few friends to a psychographic party.
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Media Sources Can Help
Demographic & psychographic profiles are
available from media sources:
Magazines
TV and radio stations
Online
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Media Sources Can Help
• Analyze media sources aimed at
different target markets.
• What does your target customer read,
listen to or watch?
• Action Step 25 will help you get started.
Conduct primary and “new eyes” research.
• Interview magazine buyers.
Do some secondary research.
• Write to advertising departments.
• Ask for media kits and reader profiles.
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B2B:
Business to Business
Business-to-business or supply chain firms can be
characterized as:
 Businesses whose target customers are other businesses.
 Businesses who do not deal directly with the end-user or
consumer.
 Businesses whose major goal is to create partnerships,
ventures, alliances, or associations with their target customers.
A target customer profile would include:
Company Profile: e.g. size of business, type of business
End user Profile: e.g. end-user application, decision-maker
Industry Profile: e.g. trends, competing firms and barriers to entry.
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Joint Ventures & Strategic Alliances:
10 Tips
1. Have a common purpose
2. Conduct research
3. Consider mutual benefits
4. Provide a structure
5. Consider potential advantages
6. Invest in human resources
7. Put it in writing
8. Stay in touch
9. Keep tabs
10.Exit stage left
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B2B or B2C
B2B or B2C? Which one will it “B”?
Recall the experience of Adrienne
Armstrong at Arbour Environmental.
You can
benefit from
both worlds.
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Field Interviewing
& Surveying
FIELD INTERVIEWING
TARGET CUSTOMERS
SURVEYING
Test your TC profile,
developed from secondary
research, against reality.
Develop a questionnaire &
identify a survey location.
Ask questions of your
potential customers.
Get permission from the
location owner.
Bargaining tactic: share the
information you discover.
Recall the experience of
Julia Gonzales.
Recall the experience of
Elizabeth Wood.
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Other Sources of
Primary Research
Mentoring: Locate a business owner who wants to help.
Experience: Work in a similar business and get all the
information you can.
Networking: Go out and talk to local businesses and
friends.
Brainstorming: Gather a group of friends, associates, or
family and brainstorm your TC.
Competitors: In some cases, researching your
competition may provide some good information about
your potential TC.
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Business Vision
Visualize your new business and the
target customer.
A business vision is:
 A mental picture of your business, product or
service at some time in the future.
 A source of guidance and direction.
 A driving force for your persistence and
passion.
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Business Plan
Building Block
Chapter 4 helps you prepare
Part B of your business plan:
The Market &
The Target Customer
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Checklist for
Your Business Plan
 Profile your target market in terms of primary, secondary, and
invisible customers.
 What do the results of your primary research questionnaire tell
you about your target market?
 What information have you developed about your target
customer from your secondary research?
 What characteristics are unique or clearly definable about your
target customer?
 What is the best way to reach your target market?
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Case
Study
My Virtual Model
My Virtual Model (MVM) is a successful company
headed up by Louise Guay and Jean-Francois St-Arnaud.
Answer the Chapter 4 case study questions to learn:
 How MVM takes advantage of relationship marketing, the
market pull approach and one-to-one marketing.
 The three types of MVM customers.
 MVM’s and Lands’ End target customer profile.
 What MVM’s business vision was and how Louise Guay
used primary research to help start the business.
 How MVM benefits from market trends and partnerships.
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