Customers are the backbone of every business. They are responsible for sales of the products and services and hence the success and profitability of the organization. So, before starting any new business it’s very important to know about its customer.

In other words, every organization must define its target customers, as they will be responsible for the sale of its products.

Defining a customer, helps to understand the needs of the customers which in return help the organization to make and build strategy plans to attract them and enhance their sales and profitability.

This is considered to be the basic step in marketing and all the other factors are directly or indirectly related to the defined set of customers.

While identifying and defining the target customers, marketers /organizations take into account the following factors:

• The identified customer has the need and the organization is able to meet those needs
• They are able to correlate with the brand and become loyal customers
• They will be responsible for the sales of their product and hence growth and profitability in long run
• Organization can grow by building long term relationship with those defined customers
• Organization can fulfill the changing needs of the customers
• There are enough target customers to run the organization  successfully

Identifying target customers helps to plan and establish the marketing strategies more effectively and efficiently for the target customers. It also helps the right utilization of funds and efforts.

A product is successful only when it is able to meet the customer’s needs and desires. This in return requires knowledge about the target customer in detail. In simple words, it requires to know about the customer profile.

Every customer is different and has different needs and desires. Therefore, it’s very important for organizations to understand its customer profile. This is governed by attributes like  demography, lifestyle,culture,gender,age ,purchasing power, end use of product etc.

Thus ,knowledge of customer profile helps to understand the customer in detail and hence in identifying the respective market segment . It also helps to determine the market size and hence the market share.

So, defining customers before marketing is essential as it helps in marketing planning and channels the product to the target customers in a better way and in a more successfully way.