Every company needs to understand who its target audience is in order to strategically target all points of contact with them and offer the best solution to their problems. When a company does not know its consumers, it is extremely difficult to scale the business and, in most cases, sales plummet. Therefore, analyzing consumer profiles is an essential activity for any company that wants to grow even faster and better.
Have you ever performed a consumer profile analysis in your company? Do you know how to do this? If your answer is no, continue reading and we will teach you!
What is the consumer profile?
Consumer profile is a set of characteristics, behaviors and values of a specific audience.
These characteristics are subject to several external influences, such as the culture of the region, social and family values, professional values, among others that determine someone’s behavior.
Through this, people are brought together into groups called “target audiences” in the business world.
In short, these are the characteristics that will help with the product offered, its presentation and the company’s communication with the consumer.
What is consumer profiling?
Consumer profile analysis is the activity of analyzing these behaviors, characteristics and values and creating a personality that unites this entire group. Through this creation, more accurate communication is possible.
To achieve this, consumer profile research is necessary, so that this definition is not based on guesswork, but rather on data.
Next, we’ll show you how to do it!
How to do consumer profile analysis?
The first step, then, as we said, is to conduct research to identify some information. This can be done in writing, by phone, online using forms or in person with a group. In this case, you need to identify some data such as:
Demographic data
You should know who your audience is, what their age is, gender, and what region they belong to. Understand that a female audience living in the outskirts of the city and between 15 and 25 years old is totally different from the one living in an upscale neighborhood, also between 15 to 25 years old, right? The lives of these women will be different; therefore, so is their consumption.
So, raise in your research:
- Age
- Gender
- Sexual orientation
- Birthplace
- Marital status
- Address and region
- Education
- Profession and income.
Pains, needs and desires
Remember to also collect in your research what your potential customer is looking for. What is a need? What is consumption out of desire?
See, when we talk about desire and need, the communication is very different. For example, when it comes to a potential customer of a jewelry store, the communication should be related to the status or beauty that the jewelry will bring to the person, do you agree?
That’s why we see the following messages in jewelry commercials:
- “Your life in a jewel”
- “Celebrating special moments”
- “There are gifts you can’t wait to receive”
- “Believe in dreams”
You realize that these “Slogans” do not speak about a need, but bring a sense of celebration, of something long awaited.
Topics of interest
A good analysis of the consumer profile also needs to include research on topics of interest. Even if people have similar interests, there will always be the possibility of having something specific to your audience. For example, although there are many women who like soccer, the consumer audience for this sport is still mostly male.
Therefore, if you have a store selling football club shirts, your target audience is also mostly male. In any segment, the subject of interest must be identified.
Importance of social networks for consumer profile analysis
Understanding which social network your audience is on is also essential for analyzing the consumer profile and defining this audience.
This is because each network has its own language, so it is important to know how to communicate on each platform and in a different way on each of them. You see, you cannot post the same content on X that you post on LinkedIn and vice versa.
Not to mention that each of the topics we are talking about here have an intersection. For example, female consumers in the beauty industry are the biggest users of Instagram. Therefore, beauty companies’ communications must speak to the platform and these users.
Purchasing power data
Finally, be aware of the purchasing power of your audience. While compiling this information and analyzing consumer profiles, you could very well derive information that defines your success in business.
Based on data and analysis, you will define your ideal consumer. This consumer will have purchasing power X.
Soon, you will know how much your product will cost. This way, you can define which raw material you will use for production, how much profit you will make and how much investment you will make in each area.
What are the factors that influence consumer behavior?
Consumers’ behavior is generally defined by their social context. In other words, purchasing options will depend on their purchasing power, the region where they were born and raised, the region where they live, their education, the family they were born into, their gender, age and individual tastes.
Putting all that into paper is not easy. Still, with a correct analysis of the consumer profile, it will be possible to outline similarities to create a group that will be called the target audience. You can now create personas—fictional characters that stand for a group of people.
And it is essential that companies of all sizes know about the topic, as it is necessary to boost sales and reach the right audience.