What does your customer look like?

Let's build a man

To be able to reach your ideal customer with your marketing communications, you need to understand him or her. 

Let's imagine your 'ideal customer' is called James.
 
Let's get to know him.  This is called "building a customer profile."

Imagine you've invited James out for coffee?

He's sitting opposite you in your favourite coffee shop. Make some notes while he makes himself comfortable and orders a coffee.

What does he look like? How old is he?  Where does he shop for clothes. Where does he live? Does he own or rent his home? Does he drive a car? What kind of car? Is he married? Does he have children? What matters most to him in the world? What does he do for a living? What's his job title? Where does he work? What newspaper does he read? Does he read the local paper? What does he do in his spare time? Does he have a hobby? Is he sporty? etc etc.

I could go on.........

This is your customer profile and not only will it inform you where you need to put your marketing messages so that James sees them but also what sort of messages are most likely to appeal to him.

For more marketing tips contact vicksward@gmail.com
 

It's not what you say, it's how you say it.

The power of feelings

A great example of associating products with emotional needs demonstrated this week by Benson For Beds new TV advertising campaign.  I think it broke on ITV yesterday.

Strong visuals, soft focus imagery, few words on screen, nice 'plinky plonk' music, softly sung, hardly any actual full blown product shots.  Simply an implication that the manufacturer is focusing on what customers need and demonstrating visually that they're providing just that; ultimate comfort.

Much more effective than if they'd spent 30 seconds trying to ram their entire product range down our throats.

I'm going to be much more engaged by images of nice looking people languishing in soft, comfortable beds!  Made me feel sleepy just watching it.

Topped off with a strapline; "Whatever you want to be, be comfortable, be Bensons."

What do you reckon the creative brief said?

Make Bensons synomyous with comfort!

Click here to see for yourself if they did it:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfO2QL8MjAM