How do you articulate your target customer profile?

Lindsay Says

One of the most consequential decisions you make as a leader is which customer you will strive to serve disproportionately.

Yes, you will be serving many types of people. But who are you OPTIMIZING for? Who is your sweet spot? A crisp, nuanced understanding of your target customer enables decision-making that both serves your business goals and enables customer delight.

I recommend capturing your target customer in an easy-to-use, easy-to-share summary. This can then serve as a trusty touchstone for decision-making across and throughout the organization.

Some develop a touchstone by generating a customer persona with photos or illustrations. Others create a “day-in-the-life” snapshot of their target customer. Still others write a first-person-voiced paragraph describing the person and their life.

Any of these can be effective. Use a style that fits your team’s style, as it will be you and your team referencing this touchstone regularly.

Personally, I like target customer profiles in a table format that encompasses demographic and psychographic traits, behaviors, and beliefs.

1) Demographics and Psychographics: Describe the basics of your target customer.

What are your customer’s demographic characteristics (age, income, gender, ethnicity, geography, life stage)? What is their personality? Likes and dislikes? Attitudes and aspirations? Worries and scarcities? How do they think about themselves? Who and what influences them?

2) Behaviors: Articulate your target customer’s baseline behavior so that you can consider how to influence that behavior.

How, when, and where does the customer experience the problem you solve? What prompts them to wish they’d had it? How, when, and where does brand fit into the larger context of your customer’s day? Is your type of offering an afterthought? Or is it planned? Does the customer embrace your offering, or do they wish they could avoid it?

3) Beliefs: Define your target customer’s beliefs around the problem you solve. Since behaviors tend to stem from beliefs, identifying your target customer’s underlying beliefs helps you understand where your brand fits into their reality and, therefore, how to talk about and deliver your offering. It makes you more persuasive.

What does your target customer believe about your category? Are they receptive to it? Resistant to it? What are the beliefs underneath that receptiveness or resistance?

To illustrate, here is a target customer profile for my (fictional) meal delivery service.

Demographics and Psychographics

Behaviors

Beliefs

Female, ages 30–45

Works outside the home; identifies as a working mother

Upper-middle-class
Skews urban and suburban
Highly educated
Slight skews toward married, but a fair proportion of divorced or separated

Life stage: In the “crunch period” of life, when kids still require heavy work and their careers are escalating simultaneously, super busy; time feels scarce; worries that she is not giving enough to her children, worries that she herself is not “enough”

Juggles numerous activities; between her own commitments and her children’s activities, she is always in motion
Serves dinner for the family every night, even after a busy day
Grocery shops 2–4x a week. Indexes high on grocery delivery but not on meal delivery
Works out regularly
Intermittently reads and saves recipes but not loyal to any single inspiration source
Regularly discusses time-saving hacks with her friends. Willing to trade money for convenience

Being a mother includes feeding my family well
Family dinner is nourishing both physically and mentally
Family dinners correlate with successful children
Despite my busyness and overwhelm, it is worthwhile to cook for my family
The experience of cooking is integral to the experience of family dinners
Food is the foundation for a healthy life; family time is the foundation for a successful life

Remember that this touchstone can be iterative. As you grow and learn more about your target customer, you will prune and add to this articulation.

The important thing is to capture it and to use it! And to do so with specificity and visibility. Do not obfuscate or hide by claiming the exercise is too difficult.

Do paint a picture of this human being that your organization strives to serve disproportionately. This sets up everyone in the organization to make decisions that build toward your sweet spot. It makes it easier and more natural to delight the person your business exists to delight.