Just how well do you know your customer?

Today's customer is a very sophisticated person. The access to social media often gives the customer the ability to research a product or service at the drop of a hat. In no time whatsoever, he is able to check out the specifications of the product, long before the purchase such that, if care is not taken, he could know more about his intended purchase than the person who sells the product! Knowing your customer in this era of the social media goes beyond merely being able to identify him and possibly knowing the environment in which he lives. That's only scratching the surface. For the numerous companies that have spent billions on the internet marketing of various products, the KYC acronym takes on a larger meaning. Such statistics as age, location, cultural background, education, sex and indeed tastes and preferences in relation to the product you are marketing come into detailed consideration.
Speaking about the ages and locations of your potential customers does not necessarily mean you pick your customers individually and begin to drill them for information. Researchers like to work with trends it is more convenient that way. If for instance, you can determine the number of people who use the internet in your country and try to discover whether your target audience is actually engaged in browsing, then of course you can find a way to get information about your product to their online location. There are numerous social media being used by certain categories of people in this age. A lot of this media is a major attraction to certain  groups of people, such that some people practically live on line! Amazon creator Jeff Bezos who purchased the Washington Post in 2013, looked at how the numbers of people who were using the internet in the US quadrupled over a period of two years and decided to begin marketing and sales of products on the internet. If your audience spends a lot of time on line then you should be doing the same.
Many parts of sub Saharan Africa  have witnessed a quantum leap of youngsters expressing themselves online via various media. Slow connections and power outage have limited their use of this media in those parts, but the youths have found ingenious ways of getting around it.
Before you pick the media for your promotions and advertising, make sure that your audience uses that media or else your message could get lost in the crowd of competitive messages daily vying for our attention. Content is the secret of online media. You may not necessarily have a creative message that helps sell the product you market. But if you have content, whether its related or not, traffic would be consistently drawn to your location on line. Banks would not draw much attention by writing about boring banking activity, but if they could engage their audiences in entertainment or fashion, perhaps people would be attracted to them and the brand they promote would gain prominence at a deeper psychological level that resonates in the surface activity of the people involved.
The culture of the people we target is also a big issue. What are their core beliefs? Are they kind hospitable people? What are their religious sentiments? Even though sensitive issues like culture and religion are not really good promotional points for marketing mass oriented products(i.e products used by a large numbers of people) habits are also a key to marketing. Human beings are creatures of habit. Knowing a persons way of life also helps us to handle them better. It is also a good advantage to know the tastes and preferences of the groups we address in our promotional and marketing activity. The wide range of soft drinks available on the market is a good example of what can be done with the taste of consumers. Sugar is a big issue. Youths crave for sugar, adults and dieting middle aged people try to avoid it like a plague. How do we handle the various audiences?
It also starts with distinguishing the various people. Once we can do that we can stretch our ability to approach them and get the message to the door steps of our customers.