If you have been following along on the Daysteps blog, you know my current project is a planner developed for women to achieve balance, inspiration, and fulfillment in their lives. I have to admit it was a great challenge because it’s for people with very different priorities and viewpoints compared to the average, career-focused consumer who uses a traditional planner. Fortunately, two of the four Daysteps cofounders ARE our target customer, so we know firsthand the needs of our target market.

But what if we didn’t have this built in knowledge and expertise? As strategists and marketers, you and I understand that a key to success of a product or service is to know the customer. What is not always clear is how, exactly does one do so?

It is easier when the developers are very similar to the perfect customer. But what of when the customers are kids, teens, women not in the work force, those experiencing a non-traditional work environment, or other non-company types? In those cases, you must somehow become the customers. Get inside their heads. Feel their emotions. Experience their reactions to relevant situations. In short, understand their viewpoints.

If possible, have someone(s) on the team who is in your perfect customer group. Also, complete primary research, no matter how small the test sample. [Yes, I hear the experienced testers out there yelling, "Statistical significance, woman!" I know, I KNOW. But sometimes small companies have to work with the limited knowledge and budget they are dealt.] Then carry the knowledge you gain throughout the planning, development, and implementation processes.

Here are more tips to help those of you with limited resources know your customers:

Respect what your perfect customer is telling you. I’ve seen cases where a segment of the target customer group is yelling (sometimes literally) their viewpoint, but it falls on worse-than-deaf ears. Company management discounts those feelings as irrelevant because they don’t understand how anyone could really feel that way. Don’t be one of those managers. As long as there are competitors or substitutes for what you are marketing, you MUST take your perfect customers seriously.

Understand the test group. Unless you can afford to commission a controlled test, with a large enough test group to be statistically significant, you will need to combine analysis, a basic knowledge of the customer, and business sense when making decisions. During Daysteps development, we had a variety of women, each falling within the general demographic guidelines we’d developed, use a beta planner for one month. Upon completion they submitted a survey consisting of a variety of demographic, opinion, and preference questions. We then looked at two groups – those who did not care for the planner at all and those who loved it – and studied the differences.

With a small test sample, the differences between groups could be right on, directional, or completely irrelevant. There’s no way of knowing by simply studying the data. You need to run a reality check on your results. Here is where your business sense and your basic knowledge of the customer come into play. Compare your results to your basic knowledge of the customer. See if they “play true.” If you cannot tell, gather more information until you are comfortable results are at least pointing you in the correct direction.

Get permission to go back to your test group. As you move forward, you will become aware of gaps in your knowledge. That is when you return to the test group and gather more information to fill in the gaps.

Understand there’s no such thing as perfect. Whatever your conclusions and actions, there will be detractors. Some will represent changes that should be made (due to unmet customer demand or changes in the competitive environment). Others will be the result of natural differences among people. Remember that you cannot be everything to everyone. Knee jerk reactions to individual feedback could result in changes less appealing to your perfect customer group. Instead, make changes with your perfect customer in mind.

The better you know your perfect customers and the more you integrated their viewpoints into the development and management processes, the more success you will enjoy.

For more insight into how we worked with our customer group when developing the Personal Lifestyle Planner from Daysteps, read my blog post For Women, By Women.