Customer profile chart
Profiling your customers gives you the opportunity to understand a range of key information about them – including their income level, location and buying behaviour. Researching your customers to create a customer profile will help you to understand who they are, so you know how best to reach them from a marketing perspective. For example, if your customers are active in the local school community, you could promote your business by sponsoring the school fete each year.
You can use market segmentation to divide a broad market, normally consisting of existing and potential customers, into sub-groups or segments, based on shared characteristics. Market segmentation can help you get to know your customers, identify what their needs are, and determine how you can best meet their needs through your products and services. The 4 main types of market segmentation are:
- demographic
- psychographic
- behavioural
- geographic.
Demographic segmentation is perhaps the most straightforward way of defining customer groups, but it remains powerful. Demographic segmentation looks at identifiable non-character traits such as:
- age
- gender
- ethnicity
- income
- level of education
- religion/cultural groups
- profession.
Create a profile of your customers by reading the questions below and typing your answers into the customer profile chart.
| Who are they? | My customers |
|---|---|
| Age (e.g. child, teenager, young, middle aged, retired) | |
| Family (e.g. size, non-traditional, extended) | |
| Gender (male, female, non-binary or other) | |
| Occupation (e.g. labourer, technical, professional) | |
| Income level (e.g. lower, middle, high) | |
| Education (e.g. primary, secondary, tertiary) | |
| Cultural background (e.g. Caucasian, African, Asian) |
| Where are they? | |
|---|---|
| Location (e.g. inner city, suburbs, rural) | |
| Distance (e.g. distance from your business, locality preference) | |
| Residence (e.g. low, medium, or high density housing) |
| Customer characteristics | |
|---|---|
| Personality (e.g. leader, status conscious, outgoing, introvert) | |
| Buying behaviour (e.g. comfort, convenience, economical, pride) | |
| Buying patterns (e.g. seasonal, usage rate, frequency of purchase) | |
| Lifestyle (e.g. health conscious, family orientated, career orientated, community active) | |
| Expectations (e.g. service, quality, risk, influence) |
Also consider...
- Learn more about how to conduct market research.
- Find out about collecting and storing customer information.
- Complete the competitor profile chart to identify key information about your competitors.
- Read about how to improve customer service.
- Last reviewed: 27 May 2021
- Last updated: 27 May 2021