Who Is My Customer? Find Out With These 10 Pertinent Questions

Who is my customer? This is one of the leading questions asked by smart business owners everywhere. We all want to know how to be of the most value to our customer base and gain insight into why they choose to do business with us. Knowing your customers can pay off in a variety of ways.

Here at BigOrange Marketing, we specialize in helping dozens of companies from managed service providers to financial firms to developers win millions of dollars in business. Part of what enables us to do this is the relationship we nurture and continuously develop with our clients. Every time we begin working with a client, we start by talking to that client’s customers. Then we create personas so we and the client know just who we’re talking to on the client’s website, in blog posts and on social media. 

Don’t Know? Ask!  

Your customers should be the hero in the story your company or organization is telling. To be authentic, you should understand what makes those customers tick. 

Let’s say your company sells personal tax software directly to consumers. One of your personas may be a first-time tax preparer. What are the pain points of first-time tax preparers? They are likely intimidated by the prospect of doing their taxes by themselves for the first time and overwhelmed by a tax code they don’t understand. These pain points differ from those of a seasoned tax preparer, whose only issue may be found in not knowing the proper way to maximize the amount of their return.

As a business owner, you want to make buying from you as painless as possible for your customers. Not all customers are the same. Depending on the type of products and services you offer, it’s possible that some clients will be more difficult to please than others. It’s good to be prepared with the necessary skill set and expertise required to ease any doubts and eliminate hesitancy in your buyer. The 10 questions listed below (excerpted from the questions BigOrange uses in customer discovery) will help you develop customer personas and provide key insight into your buyers. 

Who Is My Customer? 10 Pertinent Questions to Ask

1. What is a brief description in your own words of what your company does?

2. What is your job role? Your title? Who do you report to? Who reports to you? How is your job measured?

3. What does your typical day look like? What percentage is fighting fires?

4. What are your biggest challenges? What are your pain points?

5. Why is it important that you find a solution to these challenges now?

6. What are your goals in your day-to-day job? 

7. What does success look like? What would make you feel really good?

8. How do you learn about new information for your job? Publications? Trade organizations? Blogs? Groups? 

9. How do you prefer to interact with vendors?

10. Why did you hire us/buy from us in the first place?

Insights You Can Use

This list of questions was designed to help you look for clues into what encouraged your customer to buy from you. Ideally, the answers to these 10 questions will also give you insight into a completely different and more personal subset of questions that you have as a business owner. Who is your customer? What resonated with them about your business? Was it your marketing and sales process? Did they feel like they could trust you when they made their decision? Is this their first time purchasing a product or service of your kind? Was your business recommended to them by friends, family or other existing clients? Did they like your consultative sales approach?

It’s important to remember that without the customer, we don’t have a business. Discovering who your customer is and what insight their persona offers is a major step toward achieving success for all parties involved. Familiarizing yourself with your clientele arms you with additional knowledge and creates an environment of trust that helps customers feel as if they made the right decision. It’s also an excellent way to stand out among your competitors and grow your customer base. In the end, it all comes down to just one simple question: Who is your customer?

Looking for Customer Discovery Help?

We’d love to learn more about you and your customers as a first step in developing meaningful marketing. Book a meeting with us today and come away with fresh ideas, no strings attached.