Current customers offer a rich source of information, data and intelligence that allows business owners to build a clear profile of what a good customer looks like and how you can use them to find more customers.

There are often many types of customers within a business but at the heart of it are the ‘good customers’ – the ones that are loyal, value what you do and are happy to pay for it, possibly time and time again.

These ‘good customers’ are where you will find the gold! That is, the data you need to find more like them.

How to use current customers to find new ones

Investigate and be inquisitive by talking to your customers, asking them for feedback regularly (check out our blog on what feedback to ask and how to use it as a marketing tool.)

Information from feedback will help you understand:

• Why your ‘good customers’ buy from you.
• What your most popular products and services are.
• How your ‘good customers’ found you (what their journey was to purchase).

Then consider adding the customer’s demographics to this information to start to build a profile about your customer, such as:

• Who they are (gender, age).
• Where they live.
• When they purchased (buying patterns).
• How they purchased.

Using this data, you can start to identify common threads, behaviours, pictures, and patterns about those customers. Use this to your advantage to create marketing messages targeting people who fit a similar demographic to that of your ‘good customers.’

If you’re not speaking to your customers regularly, you will miss the ‘gold’ that this information provides.

Create customer personas

If you have an idea of who your target audience is, I.e. that ‘good’ customer base, you can start to build a visual picture of what that type of customer could look like by creating a persona or series of personas.

Personas should reflect demographics, interests and behaviours of individuals that differentiate but would take them on a similar journey to purchasing your product or service.

Here’s some of the things you could think about when building customer personas:

Demographics
What is their age bracket? Are they married or perhaps have a family? What is their household income?

Interests
What do they care about? Where do they prefer to shop? What sort of hobbies do they have? What does their lifestyle look like?

Behaviours
Are they impulse buyers or do they spend time researching? Do they use social media? What websites do they tend to visit? How do they prefer to contact brands that they buy from? How do they prefer to pay for products or service?

Marketing content they prefer
Do they relate to video or static content? What kind of video content do they watch and how often?
Do they subscribe to brand-based newsletters? Do they read blogs or watch vlogs?

Once created, use the personas to make content decisions about your next marketing campaign, helping you to reach and resonate with new customers.

Remember: Using your existing customers to find new customers starts with a conversation and a request for feedback.  This will help you to find more of the returning, loyal and ‘good’ customers.

Time to find more of your ‘good’ customers? Breakthrough can help. Find out more and book your space.

“The most useful aspect of the recent Breakthrough workshop was talking to Business Development Manager, Graham, about marketing – why you have the customers you have and using this to gain similar customers.” ~ Alexia Winfield, Bee Marvellous