3 levels of Target Customer that you need to think about
Defining your target audience is critical.
We all know this.
But what people don’t always think about is that there are three different levels of your consumers. And how you think about that can influence how you build your business and communicate your wares.
Whilst we may strive to appeal to and sell to our tightly defined target audience (or ideal customer), the reality is that there are going to be people who are not that, who still buy your brand.
They are still important as they influence your communications and how you build your operations to support your brand.
Let’s look at this a bit more.
First of all, we’re NOT talking about people who are so far from your ideal consumer that it’s hard to imagine why they’re buying your product service. If that’s happening regularly (see point below about analysing your existing customer base), then something else is happening with your understanding of your ideal customer and how you’re communicating to them.
Instead, here we’re talking about how you can profile your customer base more strategically.
The three levels of Target Customer
If the wide circle is all of your sales, you cannot assume that every single one of those is your ideal customer. As great as that would be, it simply isn’t realistic, so let’s break your sales down.
An example to illustrate
An example to illustrate the three levels of Target Customer
If the wide circle is all of your sales, you cannot assume that every single one of those is your ideal customer. As great as that would be, it simply isn’t realistic, so let’s break your sales down.
An example to illustrate the three levels of Target Customer in more depth
Bulls Eye Consumers
At the centre are your Bulls Eye Consumers (or customers or clients or supporters or members, or whatever word you use to describe the people who buy your products or services).
They are a very specific profile of person. This is what a lot of people also call their Ideal Customer, but we like to imagine them as the Bulls Eyes – spot on and EXACTLY who you want to attract in an ideal world.
That specific profile is typically aspirational and attractive to many people. Now aspirational doesn’t have to mean that they’re affluent or successful; it can simply mean that people want to be them (for example, they might not be living the vegan lifestyle every day, but they might like the virtues of sustainability and environmentally friendly.)
Knowing who your Bulls Eye Customer is informs how you create and design your entire brand experience, from the item you sell, to where and how you sell it, deliver it, the aftersales care, your communications and marketing, etc.
In short, when you build ANYTHING for the business, you build it with this profile of person in mind.
This type of consumer is well known and the one Personas or Avatars are built on (hopefully we don’t need to build on this definition more.)
The next layer is the Purchase Target Consumer.
When it comes to buying advertising and marketing space, you might find that it’s hard to buy space specifically targeting your Bulls Eye Customer. This is mainly because data doesn’t record what people feel or aspire to, but rather what they are doing or what they have an interest in (which can be used as a proxy for feelings and aspirations). For example, let’s say your Bulls Eye Consumer is a mum running a small business in creative services who’s aiming for consistent growth year on year. This exact definition is going to be hard to use when it comes to buying/targeting your communications.
Your Purchase Target Consumer is therefore how you define your ideal consumers from a media perspective. In other words, who you buy media against. Using the mum in small business example above you might define your Purchase Target Consumer as: women, aged 24-50 years with interests in small business (e.g. Small Business Owners or Small Business Saturday) and parenting (e.g. Mumset or Bounty Parenting Club).
Similarly, using the vegan example above you might buy against people who have an interest in veganism (e.g. vegan recipes or The Vegan Society) and follow/like brands who promote this (e.g. Lush or World Vegan Day) and so on.
As you can see from the examples above, this also needs to be a specific definition, but it is more widely encompassing than the Bulls Eye because you’ll need to consider how the Bulls Eye definition translates into media definitions.
In short, you communicate to your Purchase Target Consumer.
PS Facebook advertising is an extremely useful tool to explore what these interests and definitions may be and we would recommend you play around a little to see which ones get you the most traction and engagement.
The final layer is the Business Target Consumer.
This represents the bulk of your sales and is the reality of who actually buys your product.
They are the customers who aspire to the image you present when you talk to the Bulls Eye Customer and they broadly (and possibly loosely) fall into the definitions you use for the Purchase Target Consumer. Using the mum in small business example, while you might build your brand for those in the creative industries, you might still pick up some who work in HR (rather than graphic design or photography) or may even get customers who aren’t mums but fit the profile otherwise.
Just because they don’t exactly match your Bulls Eye Consumer doesn’t make them less important – this is who you’ll operate your business for, so you need to understand them as much as you do your Bulls Eye Consumer.
This understanding can be gleaned by looking at your existing customer base and understanding things like: who they are; why they bought your product/service; how they came to discover you.
One would assume that they loosely fit your Bulls Eye and Purchase Target Consumer profiles (as per the example above.)
However, if they are completely different to your inner layers, then we would recommend reviewing your inner layers and exploring whether your definition needs to change or if you’re doing something to attract a different profile of consumer to who you’re trying to attract.
A summery of the three levels of Target Customer
In summary
We often find that different parts of the business hold definitions of these different consumers, but that it’s seldom all in one place and proactively used as a marketing and growth tool.
Download this template to help you put it all in one place so that you can seamlessly make the different parts of the business work better together.
