The right leads can lead to an improved buyer’s lifecycle. It also helps to improve customer retention rate, and increases the number of loyal brand customers. Therefore, instead of marketing blindly, you should focus on targeting your ideal customers and market your products or services to those, want them.
Ideal Customer Profile is a powerful tool if you want to understand your target audience, and want a deeper insight about your brand. In other words, an ideal customer profile helps to determine the customers who have the potential to get the maximum value out of your products or services.
Here is the breakdown of the article:
- Understanding Customer Profile Analysis
- Can we perform Customer Profile Analysis without a CRM?
- Benefits of Customer Profile Analysis with CRM
- How can you find and interpret customer data?
- How can you interpret the customer data?
- The bottom line
- Understanding Customer Profile Analysis
Before we go any further, let us understand what customer profile analysis really is. A customer profile analysis defines an ideal consumer for a business by using data you have gathered in your CRM system.
- Can We Perform Customer Profile Analysis without a CRM?
The short answer is yes, you can. But without Customer Relationship Management, the process will become onerous and extremely time consuming. Chances are, by the time you will discover your ICP, your competition will already have created products or services your target market needs.
- Benefits of Customer Profile Analysis with CRM
You are still not convinced. Following is a list of 3 reasons why you should conduct your Customer Profile Analysis using a CRM software:
- You Save Time With CRM
- It Segments your Ideal Customer Profile
- You Make Informed Decisions by Using CRM for your Ideal Customer Profile Analysis
- You Save Time With CRM
If you really want to get ahead in today’s market, timing is crucial. Creating ICP with a CRM system will give you the space, and time to evolve with your ideal profiles gradually and seamlessly. You will be able to discover new markets, and also understand the processes required to serve your existing customers in a more wholesome way.
- It Segments your Ideal Customer Profile
Another great benefit you accrue by developing your customer profile analysis with the CRM software is that you easily segment your ideal customer profiles. This segmentation allows for you to be more precise with your B2B targeted marketing.
- You Make Informed Decisions by Using CRM for your Ideal Customer Profile Analysis
Customer profile analysis is the process of using data from your CRM and other resources for making better business decisions. On many occasions, a customer profile analysis is a necessity of the business plan because it helps to seek investors and find funding.
- How can You Find and Interpret Customer Data
Customers are the fuel your business needs for smooth running. It is essential to know who they are, and what they want. This way, you can regularly create products which your clients need. With access to the right customer data, you can become more effective in your marketing strategies and techniques, build brand loyalty, increase more sales, and improve your brand reputation.
So, where can you find the information your business needs to build ICPs that genuinely reflect your ideal customers?
- Current Customers
- Potential Customers
- Analytics Tools
- Current Customers
Your existing customers might not be your ideal customers, but they have a wealth of information which you can tap into. Achieve this by regular surveys, and discovery meetings to determine what drives maximum value, who gets the most out of your offerings, and lastly, whether they are happy with your products.
- Potential Customers
Your potential customers include those people who have interacted with your website and marketing campaigns. Not only these, potential customers also include those masses who are unhappy with their current services, and those who are interested in your competition.
You can reach them through social media and find out the required information. Recent research shows that 84% of millennials use social media daily, so it’s a great place to catch key account personas.
- Analytics Tools
Digital tools are a powerful source of collecting quantitative, as well as qualitative data. Several tools are available on the internet such as Google Analytics. There are also CRMs with analytic capabilities which are essential for B2B businesses for discovering more about their website visitors and customer profiles.
- How Can You Interpret the Customer Data?
Once you have collected the data, it is time for you to start interpreting it, to make sense of it. You need to remember not everyone you are going to present this data to will be adept at numbers, and stats. Therefore, it is best use such medium that is easy to understand and grasp by everyone in your team. There are few main ways that sales and marketing teams prefer for analyzing customer data:
- Generating Charts and SpreadSheets
- Explore Tool Google Sheets
- Pivot Tables
- Generating Charts and SpreadSheets
Generating charts and spreadsheets provide a simplified view of large amounts of data. Pie charts can be used to understand what your customers’ preferences are. You can also use bar charts for this purpose.
- Explore Tool Google Sheets
You can also make use of the Explore tool available in Google Sheets for analyzing business data. It uses machine learning that allows you to ask questions and gain insights much more quickly.
- Pivot Tables
Another great way of interpreting the required customer information is using pivot tables. You can summarize your data by using the pivot tables. It can also help to derive meaningful information between various points by narrowing down the data to certain parameters.
Conclusion
Analyzing customers and developing multiple ideal buyer personas allows you to understand your customers in a meaningful way. Deep understanding about customers allows your marketing and sales teams to recognize the characteristics which indicate a company or a prospect is a suitable fit for your brand.
Your customer profile analysis is only as good as the data you have, and how you apply it. CRM analytics is elemental for creating ideal customer profiles and digging deeper to understand what your customers need. Proper customer profile analysis is a must if you want to optimize your products or services, and targeted marketing for your business to business customers. If you cannot develop a customer centric sales process, you will never be able to put your money where your mouth is, nor grow as a business.
by Amna Sheikh
