Chasing Data to Build the End User Profile
When you are building a startup, it is imperative to adopt the mentality of building a business around the customers’ needs, not your self-interest. The latter matters but will always be secondary to what your customers really want. The magic happens when you align your capabilities with solutions that are demanded.
Supriya and Rajeev have an exciting product in mind but don’t want to repeat the mistakes they made in their previous startup. They now want to spend more time understanding their customers rather than going by assumptions.
After doing their primary market research, they move on to understanding the various stakeholders they have to deal with during the sales process, called the Decision Making Unit (DMU):
- End Customer/Consumer/User: Represents the person who will use your product. He/she may or may not be the buyer.
- Economic Buyer: This is the person who will buy the product and pay you for it. The economic buyer is not always the end user. For example, while buying a video game, the parent is the economic buyer but the child is the end user.
- Decision Influencers: These are people who have the power to persuade the other two stakeholders. For example, the head of purchase, company consultant or a board member with special rights are influencers in a corporate setup.
While the economic buyer and decision influencers must be known to a startup, it is the end user who is most important. Without satisfying the end user, you may end up with a product with no demand. Therefore, spending that extra bit of time and effort into understanding the end user and his expectations can give you the clarity you need.
Let me warn you though- this analysis is not easy and often remains incomplete after even putting in days of handwork. It is also not foolproof but if you have done your work diligently, it is very close to what you need.
Building an end user profile
Gathering information is only worth it if you can analyse well and generate some actionable insights. The end user profile is essentially a replica of how your end user looks. It includes everything from their age and gender to their buying habits and innate motivations.
It is a holistic description of your target customer. Its role firstly is to give you, the entrepreneur, an idea of who exactly you are going after and secondly, act as a parameter to ascertain the quality of your leads.
Why should you chase demographics and data?
It has a simple answer- you just cannot chase everyone under the sun who seems like a potential buyer to you. If you go after everyone, you will get overwhelmed by the different characteristics shown by broadly distributed buyers and feel lost. A few common characteristics will be there between individuals but only a few will fit your user profile.
No young startup has free resources and strategic decision-making is crucial. You need to exclude many customers to focus on building your initial traction and cash flows. So, narrow down based on who you really want to work with- yes, you can choose and yes, you should indeed. This doesn’t imply a drop in revenues, in fact pretty much the opposite.
Look for these characteristics to personify your end user
- Their Age
- Their income range
- Their profession
- Gender
- Location
- Goals, motivations
- Language
- Buying behaviour
- Their circles (gym, golf, religious etc.)
- Their Interests (reading, movies, sports etc.)
You may add more or cut short this list based on your specific requirements. The key is to never go unplanned. In this case, more is better- the more you know about your end user, the better strategies you can form.
Taking this pain of finding and analysing what’s truly important will be worth it in the end, you will see!
