We’ve heard time and time again from founders; they know EXACTLY who their target market is. They built their product for a specific type of person, so that’s obviously who is using it. Right? Quite often, the data actually tells a very different story of who your highest value customer or MVP actually is. Without leveraging the data and talking to your key customers, many brands may be messaging themselves completely wrong.

So how does a brand keep a continuous pulse on who their most valuable customer is? It’s quite simple -  identify your VIPs and talk to them. Even IRL!

It’s important for any eCommerce company to establish key performance indicators (KPIs) that are indicative of their highest value customers. This is typically tied to metrics such as lifetime value (LTV), which takes into account customer loyalty, frequency and longevity. Why is this important? Well, you can drive a hundred free trials a day, but if they never turn into paid customers - they’re not worth much. You can drive a hundred paid customers a day, but if they cancel after their first-month subscription or never come back to buy a second T-shirt. . . you get the picture. They are probably not the audience that you want to target your message to.

Once you have identified the segment of customers with the greatest LTV, you should - you guessed it - talk to them. Find out who they really are, and what makes them tick. It’s easy to understand demographic information such as gender, household income, and zip codes. What’s more challenging is understanding their psyche. You will want to ask questions about why they love your product? What motivates them to purchase a product like yours. Would they refer your product to a friend? If so, what would it take? The responses may surprise you, as your MVPs may be finding benefits that you never even considered.

In addition to understanding their relationship with your product, it’s important to know who these people really are on their best days and their worst. What are their interests, what do they do in their free time, what causes do they support, how do they like to be communicated with? With this information, you will be able to create a target audience that is central to your most valuable customers.

You can do this in a number of ways. We personally love being able to sit down face to face with a focus group or a video chat. Planning an appreciation lunch, dinner or happy hour and breaking bread with your best customers always tends to have incredibly productive and powerful results. One of the best executions we’ve seen is companies that establish a regular cadence with “consumer advisory boards” to get consistent feedback and ideas about new products, and more. If you’re unable to meet in person, an online survey through platforms such as Google Forms or Survey Monkey is an effective tool for surveying customers and quickly aggregating results for easily digestible insights. You can also establish your Advisory group using Facebook groups so there is a consistent conversation happening. We would always recommend offering something in return for your customer’s time and thoughtful feedback.

In order to keep your finger on the pulse for ongoing insights, we recommend leveraging a tool such as Quantcast. This is a free tool that will give you real-time insights into demographic and psychographic information for passers-by, regulars, and fanatics.

What we often see is that marketers have huge workloads, are always “on” and often feel overwhelmed by data. At many companies, there is limited access to Marketing Ops or incomplete pictures of your consumer base. Instead, we find great success with customized dashboards -- even if it’s a bit hacked together in a spreadsheet. 

The most useful data that can be converted to usable insights and then to messaging:

1. Who uses your products and when (see above)

2. Social: what types of posts have the best engagement rates? Keep it simple, don’t over-analyze.

3. Advisory input

4. Production Innovation Pipeline

5. User reviews

6. Input from inside and outside sales (if app)

Turning that into Messaging:

1. Name your cohorts. We often advise clients to establish up to five cohorts and re-assess bi-annually. These should be focused on the 80/20 rule. Where is 80% of your highest margin revenue coming from? That’s your focus.

   1. Those MVPs might be “Athletic Amy: 40-50 yo, Female sys-gender, 1-2 kids in middle school, travels 1-2x per month for business, works FT, a homeowner in suburbs, heavy user of Spotify, divorced but dating, shops regularly at Sephora, chain gym membership or Class Pass for 5 workouts per week, purchases from us every 40 days with medium value purchase.” 

   2. Tier 2 “Showoff Steve: 34-40, Male sys-gender, no kids, travels for fun 1-2x per year, works FT, rents condo or apartment, medium user of satellite radio, single, shops regularly at Zara Men online, local gym membership for 3 workouts per week, purchases from us every 200 days with high value order.”

2. It immediately becomes clear about the types of messages that will appeal to Athletic Amy vs. Showoff Steve and how to parse your email lists, align your content strategy, manage promotions, and how/when to effectively rollout products.

   1. The magic is in the stories: the ones you know about your best customers and how your brand story can become a part of theirs because it’s relevant, meaningful, and memorable.

3. TEST. Everyone says it but outside of growth marketers, a lot of teams don’t do this. Get feedback from your Advisory groups using whatever method/s you’ve established, run A/B tests for email and landing pages.

   1. Every time you have a test winner you have two powerful things: 1, data to use when talking to people outside of marketing. 2, messaging that works and gets better over time.

4. Bring them to life for your company: imagery, decks, sales sheets, data callouts, posters of them in the marketing war room, Slack channel Post, marketing reports refer to cohorts, internal newsletters refer to cohorts, train your warehouse, shipping team, sales team, retail team, events team...etc. about who they are and the key messages that appeal to them. Make it doctrine by indoctrinating everyone in the gospel that is “understanding our best consumers for the best outcomes.”

5. Last thought about messaging: a Board deck or internal deck tends to be formal but most consumers prefer brevity, clarity, and a conversation that’s more human-being-focused. Even our B2B clients have found the best success with the more personable language.
   
   Our work and personal lives are forever intertwined and consumers are overwhelmed, be the story they welcome into their lives, don’t be a robot.

About the Authors:

Lauren Pfanmiller, Founder of Bravery Consulting

Building Brands Brave Enough to Change the World. Driving profitability through digital performance marketing, so that you can get back to changing the world.

Rachael Shayne, Founder of FocusedBrands

Outsourced, on-demand branding, marketing, culture. Strategy, Design, Execution.

These two powerhouse branding and marketing teams often collaborate with brands to bring a full view of their customers and align that with marketing tactics. Contact Us if you want to inject some data and storytelling into your marketing strategy and tactics.