Ideal Customers
Utilizing our app's usage data allows us to see who our best customers are and help identify an ideal customer profile, enabling me to focus our sales and marketing efforts.
Strategic sales and marketing do not come naturally to me as a developer, but one thing I've been doing to get better is utilizing our app's usage data and using that to build an ideal customer profile. This exercise has helped me by giving me an idea of who I'm trying to reach and, more importantly, how to communicate with them once I do.
An ideal customer profile helps me identify who to focus on while building content for our sales and marketing efforts. And, while I'd love to be able to split my attention across multiple types of customers – and serve them all equally – the truth is, I don't think I can. Not on my own.
I learned that an ideal customer profile should be based on existing success. Who are our top customers? What does their usage look like? Are they an individual or a team? These are things that I used to identify the attributes of our ideal customer, and now that I have them, I'm using them to drive our sales and marketing efforts.
With our ideal customer in mind, I can start working on the content they'd find appealing more confidently. Whether in the form of blog posts, drip campaigns, or social, I'm now better informed and not just going in blind. That's not to say I know what I'm doing, but I know a little more than before.
Something that does come naturally to me as a developer is my ability to put data together. This is my advantage. I know enough SQL to be dangerous. And while interpreting the data is a different matter, I know enough that I can write a report and see how our best customers use our software, and I can write another to see how well our sales and marketing effort is performing. It's not much, but it's enough, and it allows for a tight feedback loop that I hope to use to our advantage.
I may not know much about sales or marketing, but I have found that utilizing our app's usage data from our top customers to build an ideal customer profile is worth doing. It's something I was able to do quickly and is helping me get a better picture of who gets the most out of our product, enabling me to focus our sales and marketing effort. Of course, the next step is to get good at using this information to get more sign-ups and conversions. I plan on sharing about that too.
Until then, happy building.