If you want to be a successful marketer, it’s very important to know about the demographics of your customers. What makes a perfect customer to you? Often, you have a picture in your mind of what a typical person who avails themselves of your service will be like, but this isn’t always realistic.
Let’s take, for example, the idea that you offer article writing services for clients. You need to know who the typical person is who invests in those services. Is it someone who finds it difficult to write and therefore gets content created out of necessity? Is it a non-native speaker? Is it someone who can write, but finds this too slow for them? Is it someone lacking in time? Or, is this just someone who sees the value in outsourcing this aspect of their business?
In reality, a writing client could match up to any one of these descriptions, or none of them. Different clients may match different descriptions. But, by knowing the demographics that you’re working towards, you can target the process you use to find clients, and make sure that you take on work that is financially acceptable to you.
If you identify that you want to go after higher paying clients, you need to understand that demographic. A higher paying client will see the value of getting writing of a higher quality. They will want uniqueness. They will probably want to attract writers to work for them for the long haul. They are likely to check the writing that you return to them in more depth than ‘bargain basement’ writers.
To take advantage of that demographic, you need to target your process through which you apply for writing jobs. Make sure that all your writing samples are of top quality, and are different to run of the mill writing. Make them more varied. Have more in-depth research. You may even wish to write individual samples for each possible client to make sure that you get the work.
If you’re selling a more general service or product, you may also want to tailor your approach to selling by using automated tools to identify the typical buyer. I like Yahoo! Clues, as it is a free service which will profile people looking for information. There are other similar services available, some of which are free and others of which you need to pay a fee for. The free services tend to quite good enough for this level of demographic research
Once you have built up a typical demographic, make sure that your product appeals to them. Selling to women is very different to selling to men. By targeting your copy and your products, you can increase the number of people who purchase your offer and service. This is why demographics research is so worthwhile.