The secret to having and sustaining a small business is informed target audience marketing. If you don’t know who your customers are or what they are interested in, you will waste a lot of money advertising to the wrong people. While there are limitless ways that you can define your target audience, you should always start with the basics. At Cazbah, we use something we call a Customer Composite Index (or CCI for short) to help us organize our target audience marketing information and campaigns.
Creating a CCI
A Customer Composite Index is a collection of identifying information that qualifies your target audience, on a group and individual level. Every business will have a different CCI based on a number of variables. CCIs can be simple or complex, it just depends on how involved you want your target marketing to be. But, the more information you have on your prospects and existing customers, the better service you’ll be able to provide them and the more your business will be able to grow.
The information you collect needs to help you create buyer personas for your most popular and desired customers. Your CCI is also designed to help you implement the most effective target audience marketing methods to reach your niche population.
If you don’t know where to start, let’s define a few of the biggest considerations:
Geography: Where are the target customers located? The following items should be considered:
- Country
- State/Province
- City
Company: Especially if your product/service lends itself towards B2B opportunities, this can be important.
- Number of employees – what you offer might only be useful for small businesses or large businesses
- Company Revenue
- Company Name
- Domain Name (website)
General Demographics: Information that can be used to define a group of people
- Age
- Gender
- Race
- Religion
- Language
- Education level
Why it Works
The purpose of a CCI is to help you define who your specific customers are. Especially as a small business, you don’t have extra resources to waste on random advertising and marketing campaigns. Everything you do needs to be calculated and focused.
At first, asking new prospects or customers these types of personal questions may seem intrusive, but knowing this information really will help you in the long run. However, because some of the data you will be collecting could qualify as personal and identifying information, you need to make sure you’re storing and using your customer information ethically and safely. Be open and honest about what you plan to use your customers data for and be willing to share the results of your customer research with them if they want it.
Google Analytics offers some demographic measurements, but not nearly enough to specifically identity and group together an audience. Now, keep in mind that you can tailor your specific questions to best define your audience. But in general, every business should know some of the basis information listed above. If you have statistical data (such as Google Analytics) for a long period of time, this can also be used to help identify who is already buying from you.
Knowing this type of data will help you to create the best products and services for your customers. You’ll also be better able to calculate your small business growth and deepen the potential of your services as well. Instead of trying to break into several other different niches or markets, the information you gain from using a CCI will help to keep your business on track toward achievable success. You’ll end up saving both time and money by concentrating your efforts on developing relationships with already existing customers and expanding your niche products and services, rather than trying to expand into new areas.
There are many more measurements which can be looked at, such as technology used (desktop vs. mobile device), behavior (previous web traffic or buying patterns) just to name a few, family type (single, married, children). All this information will help you develop better relationships with your customers and allow you to personalize your product/services as best you can. Depending on how you want to market, you may want to cast a broader or narrower ‘net’, so develop a set of questions that works best for your business model.
In Conclusion
Creating an in-depth CCI will increase your chances of formatting and implementing a successful target audience marketing campaign. You’ll be able to form specific buyer personas, deepen your relationships with existing customers, and be able to offer prospects and customers more personalized products/ services. When it comes to small business marketing, it’s always better to know who your target personas are and what they’re looking for.