Creating Fan Profiles For Your Business

Creating fan profiles is a great team building activity that will not only help you clarify who your customers—or as I like to say, FANS—are and their preferences, but will also help your team gel around a central brand message. Of course, many business leaders worry that this will be a complicated activity or one that will take too much time. I’ll be honest—it is a time (and brain!) intensive process. But the end result is good for your team and great for your business. So here’s how to do it.  

Block out a day for an internal team meeting. Gather everyone in a conference room with plenty of coffee and snacks. Get a supply of markers and 3M™ Post-It flip charts. Break the larger groups down into two or three person teams. Ask each team member to visualize a recent customer with whom the team member experienced an in-depth interaction. Have the team narrow down its consideration to one customer, and then have the team members sketch out the customer profile info on the flip chart. Each group should inform the entire team about the profile. Look for trends that emerge. Does your team have the same customer profile represented several times, or is there a big variety of customer types? Gather all of the information into one document, summarize trends, and follow up with the team in a subsequent meeting. Your goal is to determine the precise description of the ultimate fans of your product, service, or brand. 

Your fan profiles should contain demographic details such as: 

• Age 
• Gender 
• Ethnicity 
• Household Income 
• Household Size 
• Occupation 
• Location 

Demographic data like this helps you select the right marketing avenues and platforms for your target audience. Internet marketing allows you to select which sites or pages your ads appear on based on detailed demographic and geographic data. It’s both a smart and effective way to market to your audience. 

Once you have identified the demographic profile, the next step is to identify the psychographic characteristics of your customer. The field of psychographics is the study of psychological motivation as it relates to consumer buying behavior. 

The benefit of developing a customer profile is learning why your customers buy from you. If you can identify the psychological factors which trigger the act of buying, you will find it much easier to produce engaging content that will motivate your clients to buy.  

Did you enjoy this post? I go deeper into creating customer profiles (including more information about psychographics) in my book, FANtastic Marketing. Be sure to download your copy today!

Categorised in: FANtastic Marketing Tips, Small Business Marketing