Developing Your Customer Profile – A Success Story

What does your perfect client look like? Male or female? What age? Does he or she have kids?

All these factors affect the decisions people make. If you fail to profile your customer, you fail to understand that individual’s decision-making process.

You cannot target your marketing at everyone because not everyone needs your product badly enough. Developing a customer profile lets you narrow your marketing, so it appeals to people who have an urgent need for your products.

Business users need the flexibility to accommodate changes in working practices, so SimpliSafe’s DIY modular security system is a good fit.

SimpliSafe – A Customer Profile Example

SimpliSafe sells a wireless security system. A home or small business alarm system is a substantial investment, but an essential one for companies. Every business or home owner could use it, but only a few homeowners consider it an important purchase.

The SimpliSafe Product Range

SimpliSafe sells a range of modular security system components. These include cameras, glass breakage sensors, movement sensors and door opening sensors. The sensors all connect wirelessly to a control unit, which is connected to a cellular phone network and dials out to the SimpliSafe monitoring center if a sensor is activated.

Customers can order system components separately to produce their own customized system, or they can order preconfigured systems such as the one below.

The SimpliSafe system can be used as a local alarm, with a siren. However, it is best used with a monthly monitoring contract, which will also allow customers to monitor cameras and sensors from a smartphone using a free Android or iOS app.

SimpliSafe’s Unique Features

SimpliSafe’s system is designed so customers can install it themselves without any drilling or screwing. This makes it perfect for anyone renting an apartment or room where tenants are forbidden from drilling walls and door frames.

The monitoring contract is a monthly renewable one, rather than the minimum 36-month contract other companies typically demand. This means you can change your address without losing money. You can also take the system with you and reinstall it at your new address because components are fixed with sticky pads instead of screws.

SimpliSafe’s Customer Profile

SimpliSafe’s typical customer regards a security system as essential, often as a result of property crime in the neighborhood. Most clients are male with slightly above average earnings, and they prefer to base buying decisions on their own research rather than being overly impressed by brand names. The typical customer has children who have left home.

Buyers of SimpliSafe’s system fall into two categories, switchers and new buyers. Switchers are changing from a competitor’s product. New buyers are new to the home security market.

SimpliSafe’s Market Positioning

SimpliSafe’s appeal lies in its simplicity and reliability, together with value for money and there being no need for a long-term monitoring contract.

The SimpliSafe low setup cost appeals to buyers who have multiple demands on their income. The monthly renewable monitoring contract removes perceived risk, as does the 100-night money-back guarantee.

System portability is very attractive to families with college-age offspring because it lets parents provide sons daughters with security that can move with them from college room to apartment.

SimpliSafe’s customers value the alerts to their cell phone and the flexibility of a system that can notify them of unauthorized access to gun safes and liquor cabinets.

Take Aways

One of the first points to hit you on SimpliSafe’s website is the company saying who their system is unsuitable for. When the company makes exclusions in this way, it creates trust because it seems to be turning away profitable business. Narrowing your target market makes your product more suitable for that market. It is better to be a perfect match for part of the market than a mediocre match for every buyer.

Third party reviews like this SimpliSafe review add credibility to any product, so get your product into the hands of review sites. The SimpliSafe Facebook page is valuable as well, in relaying trust and reliability to potential buyers.

You need to know you the right people are seeing your marketing materials. If you understand those who buy your products, you can target your marketing materials at them, which costs less than pay and spray marketing.

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This article, "Developing Your Customer Profile – A Success Story" was first published on Small Business Trends