Client Portrait In order for your courses to sell well, it is important to understand your potential client. Determine its main characteristics: 1. Gender, age, social status.2. Position (ordinary employee, middle-level manager, top manager, owner of a small

Rule 5. The presentation should arouse the curiosity of the potential client It is necessary to present information in such a way as to arouse the curiosity of the audience. First give her the facts, then the explanation. In addition, acquaint the public in advance with what awaits them in

The portrait of the target audience is a composite, general image of your typical client. It makes it clear how to meet the needs of a potential buyer. Includes data such as:

• age;
• location;
• Family status;
• occupation;
• income level;
• typical problems;
• desires and dreams.

This is the most necessary minimumthat you need to know about your customers.

Often business owners do not understand who they are selling their services to. The sell-to-everything approach works against you because you end up selling to no one. Generalized advertisements, attempts to make one offer for all, usually pass by the consumer.

For example, you must know the brand women's clothing Zara. This clothing is primarily for modern women relatively inexpensive and good quality. Another brand is Bershka. These are already clothes for youth, which an adult woman will never wear.

By the way, Zara and Bershka are both owned by the same corporation(together with other brands such as Stradivarius) - Inditex. But for each category of their customers, they created a separate clothing brand. No one is trying to sell youth tops to ladies over 40.

If you want to make your business successful, you need to know who you are selling to, what problems it will solve, and how. Moreover, it is not enough to know that your clients are successful men in their 30s. The better you know your customer, the more successful your advertising campaigns.

The portrait of the target audience will help you

• think over a competent offer, an offer that your client cannot refuse;
• choose the best promotion channels. A simple example: if your target audience is young girls, then it makes sense to try;
• think over the presentation format, site design, style of texts, so that it really works - in other words, you can speak with the audience in their language;
• work out key triggers, hooks that can hook your client.

Let's figure it out.

How to write a client profile

Each product can have several categories of consumers. Therefore, you will have to make not one portrait, but two or three, or even more. In other words, you need segment your audience.

Let's take shoes as an example. There is a shoe store for women. Sneakers are preferred by teenage girls. A business woman will buy pumps with heels, she is not so interested in sneakers. But a young mother will prefer ballet flats, as they are comfortable, you can’t walk a lot with a baby in heels. Older women like comfortable shoes with a small stable heel.

As you can see, there is only one product - women's shoes, but the clients are completely different. The generalized description "a woman who lives in our city" will not work here.

In the store itself, which has different shoes“for everyone”, sneakers do not stand with shoes on the same shelf. Everything is sorted into departments so that each buyer can easily find what he needs.

Therefore, you need to draw up several portraits of the target audience. Yes, it will take you a lot of time, but it will save you a lot of money later on.

Drawing up a portrait of a client based on information in a profile in social networks

Of course, the easiest way to create a portrait of the target client is through social networks. Consider the example of the social network VKontakte.

People write about all this simply on their page, in information about themselves.

Here, a person with an upper-middle income, a young man, married, two children, a company manager. Higher education. All this information is scanned in two minutes.

For example, this person works in the field of stone processing. Listens to heavy music. Interested in tattoos (perhaps he himself has one or more). He loves hunting and fishing (he is in groups dedicated to this, plus he has a lot of photos from fishing, in the forest with a gun). He likes interesting and unique things (subscribed to pages with unique souvenirs and t-shirts).

Match group information with what you see on the page.

1. In the course of profile analysis, enter all data in a table(the set of questions may vary from niche to niche). Separate segments of your target audience will emerge by themselves.

This is how the analysis of the target audience of the women's shoe store, which was mentioned above, might look like.

Even if you don't have a customer base yet, you can sit down and think for yourself, answer these simple questions. Go through the groups and forums where your target audience lives - there you will find many descriptions of typical problems of your customers. This will help to more accurately compose avatars.

An example of portraits of the target audience of a Starbucks coffee shop

Let's look at an example of audience segmentation. Take the world-famous Starbucks coffee shops. They offer their customers good roasted coffee (you can take it with you or drink it in a cafe), sandwiches and cakes, tea. These cafes are distinguished by the price (higher than the average market), the quality of products, and a special, cozy atmosphere. Coffee houses have comfortable sofas for friendly gatherings, and free Wi-Fi.

The target audience of these coffee houses are young people. But to be more specific, then:

• students: here you can quickly drink coffee, have a snack, and in the meantime go online and prepare for class.
• young women who come to friendly get-togethers with girlfriends on weekends or after work. The cozy atmosphere of the cafe is conducive to warm conversations, and Starbucks also has delicious cakes, and there is a separate line of diet drinks.
• businessmen, freelancers, IT specialists - where else, if not here, can you meet with a client or partner? Yes, and work "out of the house", there is free Wi-Fi. Take your laptop with you, and you can sit and be creative.

As you can see, for each segment of their target audience, these coffee houses offer special products and additional services. This is the secret of their success. And high prices do not interfere at all 😄

Useful tools for drawing up a portrait of the target client

In order to draw up a portrait of the target audience, you can use various tools.

1. Survey serviceshelp collect the necessary data about your customers. These can be surveys on the official website of the company. For example, you can easily insert a survey based on Google Forms into your site. This service is free, and the survey can be done in just half an hour. All user responses are collected in one place, and then it is easy to analyze them.

2. Surveys of community subscribers in social networksis another way to find out the problems, preferences and dreams of your audience. Using an example, we see how to find out whether it is worth opening at all new business whether your offer will be interesting to potential customers.

3. Statistics of your community- another treasure useful information(provided that clients, not bots, subscribe to you, and subscribers are not cheated). From the statistics you can find out where your customers are from, their age, who is more - men or women.

4. Google Analytics and Yandex.Metricashow who is visiting your site. Here you can also get data about the geography, age, gender of your visitors. This is at least.

5. SimilarWeb- this tool will help you understand what is interesting to the audience that visits your site. Enter the site address in the search bar, and then go to the "Audience" tab.

It is necessary (and free) a minimum of tools that you can use to analyze your target audience.

Do not be lazy to study your target audience and draw up a portrait of the client. Yes, for this you need to sit, think, collect and process information. But in the end, you will be able to make more successful not only your advertising campaigns, but also the business as a whole.

“We are preparing this infographic for Lena. And the article will go for Peter. Sounds strange? This is a way to make content focused on the target audience, and Lena and Peter are representatives different groups CA. Writing in such a way that Peter, the personnel manager of a small car dealership, understands, is much easier than for the conditional “m / f from 18 to 65”.

Before the start. Let's immediately agree on the terminology so that there are no questions and misunderstandings.

Buyer Portrait = Buyer Persona = Character

I use all three definitions as absolute synonyms. All of them are found in the article in the meaning, the definition of which I will give a little later. The term is also widely used in marketing. client avatar.

Let's start with why you need all this.

What is a buyer persona?

In short - to improve communication with customers and sell better and more.

The buyer persona allows you to better understand customers - their motivations, expectations and real reasons cooperation, psychology - and makes it possible, on the basis of this information, to build a marketing and sales strategy in such a way as to better satisfy needs and build long-term relationships.

Definition and some theory

The buyer persona is a detailed portrait of your ideal customer.

Right away I wanted to highlight keywords in the definition itself, but realized that I would have to italicize the entire line. So once again about the key points:

1. detailed
2. portrait
3. ideal
4. client.

Let's start with ideals. Remember the Pareto principle? So, ideal buyers are those same 20% of your customers who give 80% of all profits. If these 20% are divided by five, you can identify a group of 4% of customers who will give more than 60% of the profits of the entire company. This is the elite among your clients. Based on the study of these small groups, portraits of buyers are developed.

The detail and completeness of the description is an important criterion for a character. How fully you work out and describe the ideal client depends on how much the buyer persona you have developed will correspond to reality (and surprise - not to meet your expectations).

In the process of developing a buyer persona, you will sooner or later encounter a paradox: your ideas about ideal customers will diverge from the data that you receive in the course of objective analysis. Just be ready for it. And a little later we will tell you how to live with it and what to do.

Here are some examples of what character profiles designed by our colleagues at Hubspot might look like.

If you look at the examples above, you will see that the buyer persona has two elements.

1. The portrait itself is a photograph, a visualization of who you are dealing with.
2. History - a story about a person, a description of his achievements, goals, pains, principles - everything that influences the decision to start or continue cooperation.

Take a closer look at Mary, Ollie and Erin - these are not some abstractions, but living people. You understand that Mary and Ollie will immediately buy a little bit for testing, but if they see the result, they will order more and more. At the same time, Mary will ask questions more often and be interested in technology, and Ollie will simply count the profit and unfasten part of it to you. But Erin with the same sweet smile will have you long and tedious before paying a lot of money at once. Already at this stage, you can see how you can change the sales and marketing strategy, what scripts to prepare for each type of client and optimize work with them.

Here is an example from Russian practice, kindly provided by UXpresso.

How to create a character for your business?

There is nothing easier! In fact, this is painstaking and intellectual work. It begins with an analysis, the purpose of which is to find those very ideal clients that we wrote about above.

So, what is needed for this?

1. Raise the accounting department and find out which of the existing customers pay more / longer / more often / more accurately.
2. Interview sales and customer service employees, ask them to allocate 3-5 best clients and justify your choice.
3. Compare the two lists and choose the ones that both your accountant and employees think are ideal. The accountant, of course, has priority, because a bank statement is, by definition, more objective than people's judgments.

Here you will find the first surprise. Because your opinion about ideal clients, the opinion of accounting and employees can differ greatly.

Yes, the accountant and managers may hate your distant relative, who you work with from the very beginning, go fishing and who likes to tell stories on the phone for a long time, but at the same time he is in no hurry to pay his bills. And vice versa, to give excellent characteristics to clients whom you have never met, and they pay carefully and do not ask stupid questions.

What to do with it? Accept, believe and continue to work with objective information - to make a real portrait of the buyer, and not paint with broad strokes of dreams and abstraction.

The sample of clients at this stage will be larger than the 1-2-3 characters we need. Even if you have a young and small company, there are at least 10-15 people with whom you are pleased and comfortable to work. This is fine. Now it's time for the next stage.

We study, compare, sift and combine

For each client we analyze, we need to create a separate profile. We already have some of the information: financial reports and employee reviews - you just need to spread it across customer profiles. But this is not enough.

We still have a lot to find out. Below is a rough list of things to learn about clients.

Working Information

• Information about the company (size, financial performance, type, industry).
• The position of a person in the company (position, number of subordinates).

Demographics

• Age.
• Income level (specific figure).
• Place of residence, living conditions.
• Education.
• Family.

Goals, fears, objections

• The main goal - as your client.
• secondary target.
• How do you help achieve these goals?
• The main fear associated with your product (not abstract).
• Other fears.
• How do you solve these problems?
• The main objections to cooperation with you.
• How do you deal with these objections?

Values

• core values.
• Why did the client choose you?

Now the fun part: how do you get this information?

1. Studying customer profiles in social networks. We add all the necessary data to the profile. Let's not forget the photo.
2. We extract information from any open sources: interviews, blogs, corporate mailings, activity on forums - everything can be useful for developing a portrait. Do not forget to lovingly store everything found in the profile.
3. We call and interview clients on items for which you did not find information in open sources. No matter how great the temptation to write questions in a letter - do not give in to it and call. Because you can wait an indecently long time for an answer to a letter, and the image that the client describes after his reflections will be very different from the Vasily or Evgeny with whom you communicate and make deals live. After all, people tend to strive to show themselves with better side- in a conversation it is more difficult to do this.

Usually, these three steps provide enough information to make a comparison table and move on to the next step. Some clients after detailed study their stories will be eliminated - this is also normal.

Now we only need to compare clients, highlight the closest traits and “splice” the types together. It is much easier to do this than it seems, because when all the information is in front of your eyes, everything becomes clear and develops into a clear picture.

It remains only to beautifully compose the information, and the portrait of your buyer is ready.

For small companies usually one or two characters are sufficient. More portraits are usually needed by larger firms working with different market segments: corporate clients(B2B) government bodies(B2G), individuals (B2C). Obviously, in this case, one character is not enough, so portraits can be created for each direction.

What to do next?

In the process of developing a buyer persona, you will already begin to take a fresh look at both the process of communication with the client and all business processes in general. Now you need to go through several sequential steps so that the need for change is obvious not only to you, but also to other employees.

1. Introduce your staff to the character. Explain who it is and how it will help you communicate better with customers and sell more effectively.
2. Print your portrait in good quality and distribute multiple copies to each employee. In the American office of Hubspot, they went further and made life figures out of plastic, which they then put in the office.
3. Conduct a survey to find out what each employee will change in their work to make communication with customers more effective.

After the staff is imbued with the person of the buyer, you can proceed to larger changes.

• Change sales scripts and introduce new models of communication with customers.
• Redesign the price and product line to better match the character's expectations.
• Change business processes with a focus on the interests, priorities and needs of the character - different characters.
• Implement dozens of small improvements that will help you better understand the client and better meet his needs.
• Create an effective content strategy that focuses on the character, and not on the talents, quirks and skills of an in-house or freelance copywriter.

In conclusion: more about the content

There is a myth in the copywriting community that “you need to write so that the text can be read to your mother.”

But let's be honest: how much does your mother have in common with the deputy director of production, who is looking for contractors to service CNC machine tools? Or with the marketing director of a large IT company who urgently needs to launch ads on LinkedIn? Or at least with the owner of an online women's accessories store looking for new suppliers?

That's the thing, no.

The person of the buyer just makes it possible to evaluate the content strategy and the content created as part of its implementation from the perspective of your client. Does he need it? What problems does it solve? How does it fit into his picture of the world? Is it consistent with its goals and priorities?

Character orientation allows you to create useful, in-demand content. It's complicated. Template and standardized approaches do not work here. But it's extremely interesting.

And it is very profitable in any perspective: short, medium and strategic.

A client portrait is a series of characteristics that allow you to better understand the target audience in order to select interesting content for it. Mailing to a segmented database is 77% from ROI email marketing But, after all, users are more willing to perceive content that resonates with their needs.

According to statistics , segmented mailings demonstrate +14% open rate and +22% CTR compared to bulk ones. And if you are still doing the same mailings throughout your address book, it's time to change something. Today we will tell you how to get an idea of ​​​​the audience, and where to get information in order to send targeted campaigns to individual segments in the future.

What is a client profile?

• Geographical position

Information about geographical location subscribers will be useful to choose the best time for mailing, send out information about great deals in the nearest stores. Use this data to create a useful, informative newsletter.

• Floor

Men and women perceive information and behave differently, so it is worth dividing the mailing list into segments by gender.

In 2003, Joe Hellock hosted study to reveal color preferences among men and women. The study involved 232 people. The experiment showed that 57% of men prefer Blue colour. Most women have also chosen blue as their favorite. Interestingly, the second favorite color of women is purple, but for men, purple is the second most disliked color. Here are the different flavors.

Other study conducted by Anya Halbert and Yazhu Ling showed that men prefer bright colors, while women choose more calm color scheme.

The decision-making process also differs between men and women. It is important for a man to know why he needs this or that product and what problem he will solve by purchasing it. Concentrate on the product, briefly describe important characteristics, If target client man.

A woman, on the other hand, needs emotions and social proof to assess the similarity of the situation for which she is looking for a solution. Tell the woman more about the brand, about the lifestyle, what feelings this or that product will evoke in her. So you can send more relevant offers to subscribers and increaserevenues by 50% and sales by 14% .

• Age

Users different ages respond to letters differently. Choose the right tone of voice and relevant content based on age. Concentrate on which age group will be interested in your offer. A ticket to a rock concert is unlikely to attract the attention of those over 50, and a bottle of expensive wine will not appeal to the younger generation.

The mailing design can also be changed depending on the age of the audience.Research results showed that dislike for orange and yellow grows over the years - such factors should be taken into account when choosing a color scheme for an email template.

• Position and income level

Statistics show that segmented mailings by position and level of earnings bring+15% to annual income. Managers and middle managers have different level income and will not be interested in the same content. Divide the mailing list into segments based on the positions of the subscribers. This will help create an audience-targeted newsletter. Add to this factor the level of income and include products and services in your mailings that match the price interest of users.

How to collect data

• Questionnaires when subscribing or creating an account

When a user subscribes to a mailing list or registers on the site, offer to fill out an additional questionnaire with questions about age, location, work or preferences. Choose the information that is relevant and useful for your email campaign and focus on it.

See below the questionnaires that users fill out when signing up for a Houzz newsletter.

Or, after subscribing, send a welcome email with additional questions.

Remember that in order not to complicate the subscription process, it is worth limiting yourself to a few questions . Users will not lose much time, and you will use the information received for future segmentation.

Ask questions and when the user unsubscribes from the email newsletter. Use the information you receive to refine and improve it. Find out why a subscriber leaves you, as The Daily Sip did in the example below.

• Polls

A survey is a powerful tool to get new information about subscribers. Due to interactivity, surveys enliven monotonous mailings and increase user engagement. As statistics show,25% of people respond to surveys . You will learn the opinion of subscribers about the newsletter and determine their preferences, and this data will help to correlate with the expectations of the audience.

In this example, Mabel's Labels is inviting subscribers to complete a survey.

• Google Analytics

The Audience section contains data by age, gender, and location. It takes a couple of clicks to view this information.

Click the "Audience" tab in the panel on the left:

You will see data that will be useful for:

Google Analytics provides information about the browsing history of the pages on your site. Use this data to segment your email list and generate leads. By understanding which page of the site and product users view more often, it will be much easier for you to create a targeted newsletter that will cause a greater response from users.

Google Analytics automatically generates a report on the number of sessions at all stages of the sales funnel, and on abandoned carts. Gather the data, review the report, and send the customer an email reminding them of the product in their cart with a discount offer.

• CRM, CMS systems

Subscriber data is stored in the CRM system. Integrations between existing databases and an email marketing platform will help you effectively manage the collected information about the user.

For example, a manager of a company that deals with real estate abroad knows that a client is looking for a villa on Koh Samui and speaks Russian. With the help, the company will be able to send similar offers to the user.

Integrations automatically transfer data from one system to another. This makes it much easier to create new mailing lists. Use the data collected in CRM during the period of interaction with the subscriber and, based on it, select content for mailings to selected segments of the address base. And then the mailing will become more personalized.

Alternative Methods

• Online communities

The advantage of such communities is that users communicate online on current topics related to the company or products, and you get insights from the primary source non-stop. You will plunge into the problems and difficulties of the consumer and understand how to improve the product: make it more convenient or practical, change the design or packaging.

Sephora, a chain of perfume and beauty stores, has created a separate Beauty Talk forum where consumers communicate, ask questions, share problems and ideas for new products. On the forum, users post photos of makeup with links to products used and leave reviews. In this way, customers themselves advertise Sephora products.

• Interview with open-ended questions

The purpose of such an interview is to understand the worldview of the consumer, determine the reactions to what is happening and figure out the logic of actions.

Set a clear goal for the conversation and steer the respondent in the right direction. Don't pre-write questions and be prepared to improvise. Such an interview will work only in the form of a sincere, lively dialogue, conducive to truthful and detailed answers.

The information received can change your vision of the product, lead to new ideas for its development and a change in marketing strategy. Take Procter & Gamble as an example.

In the mid-90s, the company spent millions to develop Febreze, an anti-odor home remedy. However, the new invention was not in demand, because the housewives were accustomed to the smells in their homes and they did not need a remedy for an unpleasant smell at all. Then Procter & Gamble conducted interviews with customers to find out how, when and for what the product was used.

Among those interviewed was a housewife who shared that a freshener for her is a nice finishing touch to her daily cleaning routine. It was these words that made the company rethink its advertising strategy and position Febreze not as a lifesaver from unpleasant odors in the house, but as an air freshener. Two months after the change in strategy, air freshener sales have doubled.

Remember, email marketing isn't just about sending updates to subscribers. Explore subscriber data, create a portrait of the audience, segment mailing lists and relationships will be strengthened, and metrics email newsletters will improve.