Who are your best customers? Best is defined any way you want to define it, but some of the absolute basics include, they believe in our cause and our loyal to our brand (Keep in mind people by what they want, not what they need. If people only bought what they needed Nabisco wouldn’t make Oreos®.); generous in their giving or want services or products we want to provide; pay on time; and are a pleasure to deal with.

How did you attract these people? Do they tend to come from a certain referral point? For example, if you ran a campaign in a publication and 50% of your existing customers/donors cited it as what made them contact you, was it the publication or the ad itself?

What is similar about your best customers/donors? Look at the demographic information you have about them. These are characteristics such as age, sex, marital status, family size, education level, geographic location, occupation, etc. If you’re a B-to-B service / product provider, then you need to have 2 sets of demographics – one for the companies you serve and one for the people who make the buying decisions.

What demographic information don’t you have and how can you get it?

Look at the psychographics to flesh out the similarities. Psychographics are the lifestyles, interests, behaviors, thinking, and attitudes of people.

Create a profile of your primary target customer based on that data and be as detailed as possible. You’ll use the profile of your ABC Company Andy or ABC Company Andrea when making campaign decisions. For example, a .com comes to you and solicits your business. The deal they offer may sound good but how many of the readers are ABC Andys or Andreas? How influential is the magazine in Andy’s or Andrea’s life? Does Andy or Andrea read it regularly or only occasionally?

Your next step: Set aside time to start mining the data in your customer list. The steps you take now will set you up for sustainable profitability. We’d love to discuss how we can help.


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