“Everyone” Isn’t Your Target Market
If someone asks “What customers do you target?”, you might be tempted to answer “Well, everyone!”
This is common thinking for many business owners. It may seem like the obvious answer for farmers because, well, everyone eats food! However, this thinking will lead to ineffective marketing.
If you try to target everyone, your messaging will be vague and won’t resonate with anyone. If you use paid marketing and try to target everyone, you will waste precious dollars showing your ads to people who don’t care.
You can’t be everything for everyone.
Although everyone eats food, this doesn’t mean they are all interested in your products. You must find the individuals who value the features and benefits of your products.
This is where ideal customer profiles come in!
An Ideal Customer Profile at Work
To be successful in your marketing and your business, you must identify your ideal customer.
Let’s look at an example:
Nine Oaks Farm raises pastured chicken, turkey, and grass-fed beef. They haven’t used synthetic chemicals on the land in eleven years and all supplemental feed is certified organic. To describe their products and farming practices they use a variety of words: pastured, beyond organic, grass-fed, all-natural, and regenerative. They sell their products at two local farm markets, directly off the farm, and through a 10 member CSA.
Nine Oaks has identified their target market as mothers ages 35-45 in the local area whose annual household income is $65,000-$75,000. They describe this group as “health-conscious”, caring about both nutrient value in food as well as being aware of the harmful effects of synthetic chemicals, particularly on young children.
How did Nine Oaks come to this conclusion?
When Nine Oaks was starting out, they did some research. They found that women make 85% of the purchasing decisions in the U.S. despite being only 51% of the population. Women are twice as likely to own the task of grocery shopping for a household. 80% of mothers with children and a spouse report primarily taking on the task of meal preparation. On average, women spend more time and money on a grocery shopping trip than men. (Stats compiled by Lexington Law.)
Anecdotally, they knew from friends and family that women were the primary grocery shoppers and cooks. Furthermore, the women in their lives were more concerned with local food and more frequently shopped at farmers markets and subscribed to CSAs. Although they observed these trends in their personal lives, they still sought out concert studies and stats.
After their business was up and running for several years and they had a client base, Nine Oaks knew from their sales data that women 35-45 were their primary customers. 8 of their 10 CSA members were women in this age range and mothers to 2 or more children. The majority of customers at the farmers markets were women who appeared in this age range, usually with a husband or young children in tow. 75% of their email newsletter subscribers had feminine names.
They also did some math. If customers were to purchase 70-100% of their meat from Nine Oaks and 10.3% of a U.S. individual’s disposable income was spent on food (according to the USDA) and estimating that 12% of diets are meat and chicken, Nine Oaks calculated what the average annual income of a customer would be.
Additionally, they talked to their customers frequently. The Nine Oaks customers value clean and wholesome food.
With all this in mind, Nine Oaks Farm can use language and images that speak to their target market. With paid marketing channels, they use the ads’ targeting settings to only show their ads to ideal customers.
Because the social posts, flyers, ads, blogs, website pages, etc. are all designed and written with this ideal customer in mind, Nine Oaks’ target market will think, “That’s just what I’m looking for!” and look more into their products.
The Benefits of an Ideal Customer Profile
1. Speak Directly to Your Potential Customers
Ideal customer profiles allow you to write directly to your target market. By knowing the features and benefits that your customer values, you can write about those things and have potential customers resonate with what you are saying.
In the example of Nine Oaks Farm, they may say: “Our grass-fed beef is lean and doesn’t have the acidity of grain-fed beef, making it healthier for your family!” This speaks to their health-conscious mothers.
2. Spend Your Time and Money Wisely
If you know who your ideal customers are, you can meet them in the media they consume.
If your customers are Gen Z, you know that only 32% are on Facebook (according to Pew Research) because they prefer YouTube, TikTok, and Instagram. With this knowledge, you can spend more time creating content for these platforms and not waste your time on Facebook.
Similarly, you will know where to advertise. In this example, Instagram is a better bet than a newspaper. For ads, you can set their targeting to your customers’ demographics, such as age, location, income level, and interests.
3. Better Serve Your Customers
You can expand your product offering to include more items that your target market wants. It is easier to sell more to existing customers than acquire more customers.
If your target market is weight-lifters who enjoy the leanness of your elk meat, perhaps you can also raise rabbits because they have protein-rich lean meat.
By knowing your customers, you can keep them satisfied. For example, if your customers want elk and rabbit, but you only offer one they may decide to go to another farm that offers both so they can simplify their purchasing by getting everything from one place.
You can also serve customers better in non-product ways. If your customers are very busy, perhaps you want to add delivery as a service or send recipes with your products.
Making and Refining Your Profiles
The process of developing ideal customer profiles is integral for a business. It is important to take time to sit down and actually craft these profiles, rather than just thinking through them. Spending time on this will allow you to truly flesh out the details.
This time dedication will pay off in the future!
As you read with Nine Oaks Farm, profiles should be developed at the inception of a business as part of the competitive analysis and marketing research process, but should also be refined as a business grows and changes.
(Note: If you are up and running already but don’t have customer profiles, there’s no time like the present!)
You should create a schedule to revisit and refine your ideal customer profiles. When you are starting out, you should refine your profiles more frequently, perhaps every year for the first five years of business and every other year for the next six.
If you add new products or make a major shift as a business, alter your profiles (or develop new ones) right away.
As you settle into your business and have the same products year-after-year, you can revisit your profiles less frequently, maybe every five years or so.
If you have very different products, you may have several ideal customer profiles. For example, if you raise grass-fed beef, you may sell the fresh cuts to families and the organ meat and bones to dog owners who feed a raw food diet to their pups. These are two different target markets and should have two different profiles.
Details to Include
In your customer profiles, you should include demographics, geographics, psychographics, and behavioral characteristics. Below is a good place to start, but you can expand as you see fit for your business.
Demographics
Demographics are the basics that describe your target market. Think information included in a census.
- Age
- Gender
- Job title
- Income
- Level of education
- Marriage and family status
Geographics
As you can deduce, geographics are the details about your target market’s location. This includes:
- Neighborhood
- City
- Region
- Country
Psychographics
Psychographics are your target market’s values. By knowing their values, you will know what drives their purchase decisions and daily activities.
- Personality
- Daily lifestyle
- Hobbies
- Pain points
- Interests
- Values
- Life goals
Behavioral Characteristics
Behavioral characteristics describe how your target market makes purchasing decisions and uses products.
- Price sensitivity
- Purchasing history
- Usage patterns
- Brand loyalty
- Preferred social media
- Information sources
Conclusion
Ideal customer profiles are essential for your business. They are devices that help you find your target market, speak to them directly, spend your time and money wisely, and satisfy and retain your customers.
Develop your profiles at the inception of your farm and continue to refine them throughout your years in business. Include demographic, geographic, psychographic, and behavioral information in your profiles.
Remember: Just because your ideal customer profiles are very specific, doesn’t mean people outside of these profiles can’t or won’t purchase your products. This is merely a tool to guide your marketing efforts and make your efforts more effective.
Overwhelmed?
I’m here to help! Schedule a free discovery call today to discuss how we can partner to ramp up your marketing efforts and their effectiveness.
