What is a core customer? You’ve probably heard the term, but you may not have given it much thought. You might think of a core customer as a member of your “target audience” or as your “ideal customer.” Whichever term you choose, in essence, a core customer is a person who’s very likely to shop and appreciate your service or business. Finding and narrowing your core customers takes a little bit of work — but doing the work to identify them can benefit your company in the long run. 

So, how do you find your core customers? Read on as we outline several steps that will help you locate these valuable members of your business community. 

Phase One: Research Research should be the first step toward discovering who your core customer is. This process can include drawing conclusions from data you already have access to through previous product sales or marketing campaigns. It also might consist of gathering new information through focus groups, social media or other crowd-sourcing means. 

1. Ask Your Customers 

The first part of the research phase involves a better understanding of the experiences of your current customers. And the best way to learn what your customers are thinking is to ask them! Creating a direct line of communication between you and your customers can benefit your business in many unexpected ways. If you’re starting fresh with your business, consider asking friends and family. This research can consist of a variety of questions, depending on what your goals are. Consider what information you want to know about your core customers. This can depend on what product you’re selling and how it relates to your customers’ lives. How are they enjoying your business? What would they like to see improved? Do they feel valued? Whichever questions you ask, this should be the start of a continuous conversation between you and your current or future customers.   

2. Analyze Your Competitors 

The next phase of research consists of looking at your competitors. Look for who they’re targeting via their social media marketing or other forms of advertising. Look for where their product is being sold and at what price points. Once you’ve gathered some competitor data, you can ask yourself if you want to target the same people or if you want to try and reach a different audience. 

3. Learn Your Customers’ Behaviors 

Conducting behavioral research allows you to learn more about your core audience’s habits. Will your core audience be consumers who shop with your business once, or do you want to target an audience of repeat shoppers? You should also ask potential customers where they tend to shop. This can help you meet your customers where they are and lead you to new ones.

4. Define Your Core Customers 

Finally, consider creating some customer personas. A customer persona can be simply defined as a fictional character you create to represent a core customer. After amassing some research data points, create these personas to help determine your core customers and to help you make decisions moving forward. Phase Two: Targeting Your Core Customers Now that you’ve completed the research phase, it’s time to start hunting for core customers! 

5. Start Broadly 

You’ll want to start with a broad focus to avoid overwhelming or limiting yourself and your team. This doesn’t mean starting by attempting to target everybody ; targeting everyone indiscriminately won’t benefit your business. Instead, start with simple grouping ideas like gender, age and location. This step can also include deciding your core customer’s average income. This step can be easier if you already have a set of customers to pull data from, but if you don’t, the research phase will help get you started. Look to your broad customer persona for help in identifying the characteristics of your target audience. 

6. Narrow It Down 

Next, begin to narrow down your pool of customers until you can really find your core. You may have multiple customer personas ; if so, try and identify the differences between them. You can further narrow down your personas by addressing their psychographics (i.e., the classification of people according to their attitudes, aspirations and other psychological traits). This is where your behavioral research comes into play. Be very specific when addressing your customer persona. If you identified your core customers as being women in their early thirties, for example, then ask some of these customers what their values are. What are their hobbies? Do they enjoy shopping in person or online? Determining these answers can help to narrow down your customer persona and lead you to your core customers. 

7. Get Creative 

Customer personas don’t have to be all numbers and facts! Think of a specific customer persona’s job or how they dress. Now, ask yourself who you know in real life that also fits those descriptors. Getting creative can be fun, and it may lead your team toward understanding and empathizing with your customers better, thus leading to more effective decisions. Phase Three: Verify Your Work Now it’s time to verify your work! Implementing the customer personas in your decision-making process and measuring the success of those decisions can help determine whether or not your research, personas and decisions were correct. Here are some ways to test this: 

8. Product Demos 

Utilizing the direct line of communication you’ve built with your customers, find a way to do an in-person or virtual product demo. Let the customers use or see the product in action and document their findings. Product demos can be useful if you have a new product you’re planning to launch, or if you want to test changes before sending them into the market. 

9. Talking to Customers 

Once a product is out in the world, creating communication between you and your customers can provide you with vital information. This information will let you know if your core customers are the ones shopping for your product — or if you’ve misjudged your target somehow. If they aren’t, you now have a chance to adjust your price — or your audience. 

10. Feedback and Further Adjustment 

Gaining and providing feedback is crucial. Asking your customers more questions about the product, how they found your product or how they use the product can help determine the success of your research and personas. Providing transparent feedback to the responsible teams within your organization can help lead to efficient adjustments to the research or persona-creation process. 

How Acima Leasing Can Help 

Identifying your core customers can be a great first step toward reaching new customers and increasing sales. Working with Acima Leasing can help as well! With Acima Leasing, your customers will have access to shop without using credit*. Our lease-to-own options* will provide your core audience with the flexibility that they want to shop with you. These options can help your business attract an entire network of previously out-of-reach customers.