Business problems that consumer profiling can solve

Consumer profiling is your way to know who your existing and future customers are. It helps drive your brand’s direction, guide your business through rapidly changing markets and  unlock new sources of growth. 

Here are some of the specific challenges your brand might face that can be solved with a consumer profiling analysis.

And it’s also good to know what can go wrong if you don’t run consumer profiling, so make sure you make smart decisions based on reliable insights.

Understand your category’s different consumer types

… (and find the right ones for you!)

No matter how broad or niche your category is, your existing and potential customers are all different people with different attitudes and preferences. That makes it super important to know your target consumers inside out to make sure you’re offering them the product or service they really need and love. 

By running early consumer profiling you can learn how consumers in your target market think, behave and why they buy. 

Find out what messaging resonates with your target customers

A key part of understanding the types of consumer in your category is knowing what messaging will resonate with them. 

Through consumer profiling you can learn how you should communicate with consumers to bring them on board and turn them into happy, loyal customers. 

Get a consistent understanding of your target customers

From consumer profiling research you can create customer profiles that stakeholders across your business can use when trying to understand who they’re targeting. 

Sales and marketing teams can use these profiles to make sure they’re talking to customers in places and ways they know will resonate. While product and tech teams can use profiles—combined with good user research—to tailor products to ideal customers’ needs. 

It’s really helpful for everyone across your business to have a consistent understanding of who they’re targeting, even if the details of profiles change depending on which team is using them. 

For example, a customer profile used by a sales team might include things like role seniority and location, while a product team might find it more useful to use a profile that includes things like preferred device type and average daily time online.

As well as our consumer profiling question bank and example surveys, we have loads of other great questions for your consumer profiling project.

Identify new marketing channels

When you find out how your customers act, you’ll ideally also find out where they scroll, browse and shop. With this information you can open up new channels for your marketing campaigns to make sure you reach your ideal customers in their natural habitat. 

You might also learn about new retail channels to explore. Perhaps you think your customers shop exclusively online, when your consumer profiling might reveal that a valuable segment of your target market would happily buy your product from a physical store. That’s an example of how consumer profiling can help you open new opportunities.

Stay ahead of your competition with consumer trends

The beauty of running consumer research on a continuous basis is that it can reveal upcoming consumer trends that might affect your brand’s performance, which you can use to guide your future activities. 

In a world where markets are in constant flux, it’s vital for your business that you stay on top of the mindset of your current and potential customers, so you can set your business up to (a) survive and (b) thrive.

Set yourself up for future research projects

When we work with brands who are looking to carry out some form of consumer research, we often come across the same situation: although you may think you need, for example, some new product development research to find out what your ideal customers think about your next big thing, many brands don’t actually have a clear understanding yet of exactly who their ideal customers are. 

This is where consumer profiling comes in! 

Consumer profiling often ends up being brands’ initial foray into consumer research, so that they set themselves up properly to make sure they know who to target with their next piece of research. 

Let’s take a quick dive into how you may need to run some consumer profiling before you delve into another type of research.

Brand tracking

With brand tracking, you often want to find out what specific consumer segments think about your brand and products. You might have a gut feeling about who your target segments are, and that can be a great place to start, but to get the most out of your brand tracking, you really need to know the specifics. 

Running consumer profiling will help you find out who your ideal customers or future customers are, and you can then run your brand tracking to that audience to make sure you’re asking a relevant group of people for their opinions and attitudes. 

New product development (NPD)

You’ve got an awesome new idea for a product that’s going to revolutionize the market—fantastic!

Your next step is to find out from your potential customers what they think about the product, how they’d buy it and how much they’d pay. 

Great! So who’s in that target audience?

There’s one way to find out. You guessed—consumer profiling is what you need. 

By running consumer profiling you’ll find out who your valuable potential customers are, and you’re then able to ask that segment what they think about your game-changing new product (and most importantly whether they’d buy it!).

Creative testing

You’ve got a stellar Design team who are eager to get working on your next groundbreaking ad campaign. Now you want to find out which creative assets will resonate best with your target audience. 

Creative testing is what you need! 

But, yep, you guessed it—first you’re going to need to find out who you’re going to test this creative with. 

Because getting started with consumer profiling is your way to find out who your ideal customers are, you should make sure you do this first, and then you can run your creative testing to this audience that’s made up of the right people for your brand.