How to Identify Your Ideal Customer Persona

In my last blog we talked about the first question you must answer to help keep you from struggling to market your business, or even get it off the ground:

What problem are you solving?

As I said in my last blog:

“You’re selling your product or service because you’re solving a problem, or problems, for your customers”.

Once again, I want you to read that last sentence!

Knowing that answer sets you up to answer the next important question:

Who Is Your Ideal Customer?

Who exactly are your customers? Whose problem(s) are you solving?

And it doesn’t matter what you sell, your target isn’t ‘everyone’. Not everyone needs what you sell, nor can you reach everyone that needs it.

You’re going to invest a lot of time and money getting the word out about your good or service, so your marketing plan needs to be specific.

You have to be more specific about whom you’re marketing so that you’re ROI on your advertising dollars is higher.

You need to know Your Ideal Customer Persona.

A customer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer, or customer set. It’s the segment of the market you’re trying to reach.

To do this you need to do some basic market research. And you don’t need to be a giant corporation to do this. There is information readily available to you right in front of you.

Look at your customer database or sales records. Interview customers when they are in the store. Send out surveys. There are many other ways that don’t cost an arm and a leg.

Use website forms and social media platforms to capture important customer information.

Quora.com – see the most common questions for your niche.

Facebook Groups – review profiles of group members.

Online Marketplaces & Review Sites such as Amazon, Yelp, Udemy, AppStore etc.

Google Analytics – review demographic &  interest reports.

Facebook Analytics – review demographic reports.

YouTube Analytics – review demographic reports.

This research will give you real data about your prospective and existing customers, and the problem(s) you’re solving for them. This is the person for whom you’re creating your content, products, or service.

Your ideal customer persona is not a real person but an aggregate of your ideal customers’ traits. Not everyone will have the exact set of traits you list, but they will fall in there somewhere.

Knowing your ideal customer persona will allow you to personalize and/or target your marketing for different segments of your audience. This means you may have multiple customer personas.

You’ll need to discover:

- What problem(s) your customers are trying to solve

- What their demographics are

- What problems you can help solve

- And where they’re going now to get help

By knowing these things about your customers, you won’t be sending the same lead nurturing emails or other marketing campaigns to everyone in your database. You can segment by customer persona and tailor your messaging accordingly.

Developing a customer persona results in stronger and more cost effective marketing. It allows you to convey a more tailored message, minimize advertising waste, and even discover objections holding back customers.

Keep in mind, remember your buyer persona is a theory. Test this theory with the feedback and data you’ll collect about your audience as you grow.

You can now get the right message, to the right people, at the right time!

It starts by spending a little time identifying Who Your Ideal Customer Persona is.

We can help!

For more information about how The Cobalt Group can help you identify your ideal customer persona, or any business or leadership challenges you are facing, Contact us.

We want to hear what you think. Leave a comment and let’s start a discussion.

Copyright © 2019 The Cobalt Group LLC. All rights reserved.

8 Benefits of a Business Health Check

In EVERY business in EVERY industry in the world there are always more costs savings, more efficiencies, more profit, more market share, and more success obtainable than what is currently being achieved? 

Do you want more of any or all of those things? Are you happy with where your business is today or do you want it to be more?

Every year most of us go to our doctor to get and annual health checkup. It helps us see how things are doing and identify where problem areas are in our health.

So why not do a Business Health Check every year?

Let’s start by identifying what a business health check is.

A business health check is simply a full diagnostic of the state of a business.  

It starts with an evaluation of the current position of the business and provides an assessment of the critical elements affecting your business both internally and externally.

This assessment gives an external view of the business to highlight where things are going well, the areas that need change, and how to improve those areas to make a business even more successful.

Why does your business need a health check?

The main reason would be to see how we are doing as a business.

And a business health check is not just for struggling businesses. Healthy businesses can benefit from one as well.

It’s just like getting an annual health check – we may feel just fine but the doctor may discover something we weren’t even aware of so we can address it.

Here are 8 Benefits of getting a Business Health Check regularly!

1. Know the Current State of Your Business.

Probably the most obvious benefit of a business health check is getting an objective overview of where you stand.

This offers you with the basic knowledge of the overall business performance, where things are going well, where opportunities for improvements and growth are, customer experience, employee engagement, and more.

You should come away with a clear, objective view of your current overall business health.

2. Understand Your Business Maturity.

Businesses all go through three basic maturity stages:

A.  Infancy: Startup and initial growth

B.  Adolescence: Emergence and expansion

C.  Maturity: Stability and progress

At each stage there are a lot of competing demands upon the business owner. A health check will help pinpoint exactly where a business stands internally, and externally in relation to the market. Understanding your maturity is necessary for identifying improvements to get your business to the next stage of maturity

3. Identify Strengths & Weaknesses.

There are many business owners don’t think they need help. The truth is that some of them may be right.

But wouldn’t it be valuable to have an external expert an objective look into what you are doing, how you’re progressing toward your goals, and make further suggested improvements to help your business become stronger?

4. Spot New Growth Opportunities.

Sometimes you can’t see the forest for the trees. Maybe you think you’re ready to expand but you’re not…or vice versa.

Look for new growth in your industry, other growth areas you may not have considered. Or, perhaps further growth in an area that you have already built upon.

A business health check can help you identify potential growth areas, and better prepare for this expansion?

5. Identify Business Threats.

Do you fully understand where the threats to your business success are coming from? Internally or externally?

Identifying these threats won’t necessarily make them go away, but knowing what they are will help you adapt your business to mitigate the damage as much as you can.

6. Re-calibrate Your Business Goals

Re-calibrate and refocus on the long-term goals you have for your business.

It’s easy to get caught up in the everyday problem solving, we lose sight of the reason and goals we had for the business, it’s time to get back on track again.

7. Get an Objective View

An opportunity to look at your business from a different perspective.

Getting another perspective from outside the industry with business experience can provide constructive ideas to really ensure future success.

8. Gain a Mentor

You get an expert to discuss your business with, much like a mentor.

Sometimes a business owner does not have anyone suitable to talk to about the business at a strategic level. Employees are usually not appropriate, friends and work colleagues may not understand or be experienced, but a business health expert, or consultant, is trained to quickly assess your business and help with problems and changes for improvement.

There are many more benefits of doing a Business Health Check, but the 8 above are great benefits for you and your business.

For more information about Business Health Checks and how The Cobalt Group can help you do business health assessment, or help you with any other business or leadership challenges you are facing, Contact us.

We want to hear what you think. Leave a comment and let’s start a discussion.

Copyright © 2019 The Cobalt Group LLC. All rights reserved.

Looking Within While Looking Without

About 3 years ago I took a sabbatical from Cobalt Group to be the Executive Director for a park and recreation district that employed about 60 full and part time staff. It was a fantastic job and a great experience.

When I started I discovered that the district had been running at a loss for the previous six years. Even though the district was supported by an operations and maintenance tax levy (about 58% of total revenue), I knew that I had to treat it like a business and start making it profitable. My first approach was to start looking within and control the controllable. In my experience, the easiest thing to control is the expense side of the P&L. The harder thing to do is be looking without because revenue is harder to control than expenses because, while no business can make customers come in, they can have more control over their operating costs. So I began looking at what the expenses were and where savings could be made.

The first thing I did was to determine what the cost of operating the district was. This had not apparently been done before but I figured out what it cost to open the doors every day. From there I looked at all the items on the expense side of the P&L and began working with my senior staff to understand what those expenses were and what they really needed to be. We looked at labor costs, vendor contracts, regulatory expenses, maintenance, utilities, cost of goods sold, and every other expense category to get an idea of where we could shave those costs.

Some tough decisions were made but I made sure that my staff understood what we were doing and why we were doing it. They knew their departments better than I did and by making them part of the process they now had ownership in the outcome. We met frequently to see how costs were tracking, and made adjustments where we felt it was warranted.

The staff performed wonderfully and at the end of my first full fiscal year, with only one fee increase made to only one program, we ended up with slightly over $20K in profit. This was the first profitable year the district had achieved in six years. We kept up the cost controls and at the end of my second full fiscal year we had a profit slightly over $50K. This occurred because my entire staff understood what we were trying to do, they were invested in the outcome, and they worked diligently to make it happen.

Getting back to profitability provided many lessons learned that I will share in future blogs. But going back to the basics was key. For any business, if you want a better chance at increasing your margin, start where you can have the most control – expenses. But don’t neglect the revenue side of the equation either. Start Looking Within While Looking Without.

The Cobalt Group can help you with this. Ask us how.

We want to hear what you think. Leave a comment and let’s start a discussion.

Copyright © 2018 The Cobalt Group LLC. All rights reserved.