Power Direct Marketing: The Book
The Value of Profiling
You need to profile your audience and from all these sources find the right audience in which to reach for new business. The purpose of profiling is two-fold:
1. To determine what you can invest in getting a new customer
2. To determine where these new prospects are most likely to be found
If you have a customer base, the first thing you need to do is to clearly, cleanly identify the common denominators in that audience.
- Titles of the people if it’s a business list, or the group of titles that neatly fits
- Number of employees in those companies
- Standard Industrial Classification (SIC) code of the customer base
- Use of your product—its applications
- Financial strength and rating
If your audience is consumers, identify what you know about that group of individuals.
- Age
- Sex
- Zip code demographics
- Family size
- Married or single
- How long at the same address
- Hobbies and other interests
- Home value
Consumer and business marketers want to know how many times they bought. And how frequently. If they purchased by mail. What have they bought from others that relates to your product and service? How did they become your customer? What was the source of the business?
Identifying markets is not necessarily easy. With direct marketing it can be complicated, even complex. And, it is so critical! For without the correct audience it is highly unlikely you will be successful with your marketing campaign—even if all else is lined up right and implemented flawlessly.
In business and consumer direct response, when your penetration level gives you high response in a particular segment, you can safely assume this identifies a niche which has a high propensity to buy your product and/or service.
On the other hand, if your penetration is not high, it certainly does not mean this audience won’t buy from you. It could mean any number of things. It could mean your offer wasn’t targeted accurately at this group. It could be your timing was off—the season was wrong. It could even be you never asked for the order!
There are three main areas where you will find your audiences. They will come from your house lists, your response lists, and your compiled lists. First is from inside your own building, your office, your company, your own files.