Define an Ideal Customer for Your Tours and Activities [Worksheet]

Who are the perfect customers for tours and activities you provide? Have you created your ideal customer profile yet? Do you know why’s that so important? Prior to aiming your marketing efforts to win more customers, you need to determine the ideal one.

Perhaps you think you know everything about them, and that there is no need to define a perfect customer on a piece of paper. But do it anyway. Maybe the results will surprise you. If you have already determined your ideal client profile – refresh it! As technology changes, so do customers’ habits, desires, and lifestyles, almost daily.

In this blog post, you’ll find out how to determine your ideal customer profile. And why is that so important? Because it directly affects your business. It will improve it! So, download the worksheet at the end of this post. It’s specially made for tour and activity providers. Fill it out and voilà! You’ll be looking at your ideal traveler. After you know who your ideal clients are, it’s easier to approach them.

Defining an Ideal Customer

Tours’ and trips’ buyers are interested in the travel agency’s offer. They are willing to pay the full price and even more for their travel experience.

Customers that are satisfied with the tour they took, will be enthusiastic about promoting it. Recommending it to friends, writing positive feedback on TripAdvisor and taking your services again. Those customers will actually generate more profit for you and are easy to work with.

Before you even start, creating a profile will give you a clear vision of your ideal customer. It’s a fictional customer with a name, picture, and specific demographics. Everything’s made up of several other real people’s characteristics.

Gathering information from people you think could be your ideal customers is always helpful.

Creating Ideal Customer Profile

Let’s say that you provide safari tours in Africa and you want to attract Western tourists. You’ve identified that your ideal customer is a wealthy man between 45-55 years of age. You need to determine these 6 steps:

     1. Basic Information

First, you need to personalize your profile by giving him/her a name and a face. You can create your cartoon avatar on Avachara.com or Face Your Manga. In this phase, you’re writing down all the basic information you can think of. For example, his/her gender, age, location, profession, marital status, children, income etc.

     2. Life Values and Interests

Now step into the shoes of your ideal customer and imagine life as if you were that person. Write down his / her: life values and interests, hobbies, lifestyle and what they do to relax in their spare time.

This information will help you to understand your customer better. Which brings you a better insight into his / her motivation for your tours.

     3. Trip Motivation and Desires

Determining his / her possible motivation helps to understand why your ideal client wants your tour. Why would he/she want to go on your tour and what he expects from it? Does he/she run a stressful life and wants to relax? Or maybe is looking for an adrenaline rush? What would be “the perfect tour” for your ideal customer?

Use this information to adjust your tour or activity to your traveler’s needs and desires. Does your tour give him or her what they need, makes them feel good?

You could design tours that suit your perfect client better and make a decision about the tours you can develop next. Maybe in the future, you can take over a niche where you become “the one to go for that type of a tour”.

     4. Source of Information

This stage is about determining how your ideal customer gathers information about your tour. Maybe he/she got a recommendation from a good friend. Maybe they came across your tour on the Internet. Write down all the sources of information. E.g. social media, books, magazines, blogs…

They will help you determine where and what distribution channels you want to be present in. You need to be where your customer is. Also, with this, you can define what would be interesting and useful for travelers to read about on your website. As well as what vocabulary and tone you should use to sound like a friend and to develop trust. As a result, it will be easier to tailor a promotional message for your travelers.

     5. Fears and Obstacles

It’s time to write down all the possible reasons your ideal customer might not choose your tour. Maybe your web page and reviews don’t reflect such an attractive image of you as a tour provider? Possibly you don’t have a clear and instant online booking system?

If you have a solution for your ideal customer’s fears and objectives – figure out why don’t they know about it. If a solution doesn’t exist – why doesn’t it exist? This will help you discover what is the “final push” that makes your ideal client buy your tour.

     6. A Story

This is the fun part – write a story as your traveler would, not as yourself. Imagine that you were him/her and you want to buy a tour or activity similar to yours.

You get the point. This is a short version of the story, but you should try to be as specific as possible.

1, 2, 3… 10 Customer Profiles?

Having a few perfect customer profiles is OK, but try to create as less as possible. It will help you stay focused on a specific customer segment. There are many people who may be interested in your tours but aren’t your perfect customers. Experience shows that it’s better to focus on 1 or 2 target customers and define them in detail. It’s more profitable than defining a completely different type of customer also.

Experience shows that it’s better to focus on 1 or 2 target customers and define them in detail. It’s more profitable than defining more of the completely different type of customer profiles.

Stick the document you just created in a visible place in your office. You will always have a reminder of whom you need to focus your efforts on. And you’re now who you’re talking to when the person’s face is not right in front of you. It will make your communication more human-like and more sincere.

Reach out to us if you’d appreciate some help! If you have any questions or comments, feel free to contact us or share it right here.

Finally, if you liked this blog post, spread the love with your colleagues!

ORIOLY
on February 17, 2017

by Lidija Šomodi