The 9 Different Types of Customer and How to Shape Their Experience

Marketing Insights for Professionals
The latest thought leadership for Marketing pros
There are plenty of different types of consumer, and the best marketers will know how to appeal to whichever personas are relevant to their business.

Every marketer knows that there's no such thing as a homogenous audience. Every customer is different, and they need to be targeted in different ways. There are plenty of ways of dividing up a target market, and most companies have set personas based on the interests and demographics of potential consumers.

However, you can also divide customers up by behavior. On a basic level, most consumers fit into one of nine categories. Each of these responds well to different marketing strategies, and considering your personas in this manner could help you unlock new audiences.

Why customer profiles are so important

Effective targeting and personalization have grown in significance for marketers in recent years. Research has shown:

  • 70% of customers agree that how well a brand or business understands their individual needs impacts their loyalty
  • 84% of customers report that they'd be more likely to buy from companies that see and treat them as a human being rather than a number.
  • 72% of customers say they only engage with personalized messaging

Customer profiles are an essential part of the journey toward effective personalization. They're your first step towards delivering truly relevant, engaging messages and marketing content to your customers, based on your understanding of characteristics like:

  • Age
  • Location
  • Income
  • Job title
  • Buying habits
  • Pain points
  • What they want from your product or service

Once you have the fundamental elements of your audience profiles in place, you can start to think about what these traits mean in terms of your customers' key decisions and behaviors. For example, do their characteristics make them a good candidate to be a loyal customer? Or are they more interested in making one-off purchases when they have a specific need to meet?

It's worth doing some research into your audience and thinking about how they can be classified into different customer types. This will improve your ability to target and personalize your marketing to connect with them.

So what are the 9 common types of consumers, and how can you market to them?

IFP visual showing 9 different types of customer and their personalities