Today is #KnowYourCustomerDay.
In banking, “know your customer” is a compliance requirement. Institutions have to verify who they are dealing with, and they can be penalised if they don’t.
In affiliate marketing, nobody is going to audit you.
That is exactly why it so often gets neglected.
The audience you think you have
Most affiliate content starts with a keyword. “Best laptops under £1,000.” “Top project management tools.” “Best budget headphones.”
That is a sensible place to begin, because it tells you what people are searching for.
But it tells you very little about who is searching, why they are searching today, or what is stopping them from making a decision.
Two people can type exactly the same phrase and need completely different answers. One is a student on a tight budget. The other is a freelancer whose old machine has just died in the middle of a deadline.
If your article treats them as the same person, it will probably serve neither of them particularly well.
Why this matters more now
An AI assistant can summarise specifications, prices and common pros and cons in seconds. The generic version of a recommendation is becoming easier to replace.
What is much harder to replace is a genuine understanding of one particular type of person: the problem they are trying to solve, the doubts they have and the words they use to describe them.
That understanding is what turns information into a recommendation someone has a reason to trust.
What knowing your customer actually means
It isn’t a list of demographics. Age and location rarely explain why somebody hesitates over a purchase.
The more useful questions are practical ones:
- What problem pushed them to look for an answer today?
- What have they already tried?
- What are they worried about getting wrong?
- What words do they use to describe the problem, as opposed to the words the industry uses?
- Where are they in the decision: just browsing, comparing, or ready to act?
If you can answer those, your content tends to become clearer almost automatically.
Where the answers are
You probably already have more information than you realise.
- Replies to your emails. People often tell you exactly what they are struggling with.
- Comments and messages. Repeated questions are a content plan in disguise.
- Communities and forums. Read how people describe the problem when they aren’t talking to a marketer.
- Your mailing list. One simple question, such as “What is the biggest obstacle you’re facing right now?”, can be more revealing than any amount of guesswork.
The honest complication
You will never know your customer completely. Small audiences produce limited data, and it is easy to mistake a handful of comments for a trend.
There is also a line to respect. Knowing your audience does not mean collecting everything you can about them. Ask for what you genuinely need, be clear about why you are asking, and handle it responsibly. Trust is the whole point, and it is easily lost.
Treat what you learn as a working understanding to keep testing, not a finished profile.
The practical takeaway
Choose one piece of content you have published, or one you are about to write, and complete this sentence:
“This is for [who], who is struggling with [what], and needs to decide [what].”
If you can’t finish it, that is useful information. You may be writing for a keyword rather than a person.
Then ask three people on your list or in your community one question about what they are trying to achieve. Compare their answers with your assumptions.
A mailing list is one of the most direct ways to keep that conversation going, because it lets you hear from your audience and not just count their clicks. If you’d like to see the resource I use to build mine, the link is below.
http://www,davethomasonline,com/blog/CBPC
The close
Knowing your customer isn’t just a banking requirement.
For anyone recommending products online, it is what makes a recommendation worth trusting.
If you had to describe your ideal reader in one sentence, could you do it, and would they recognise themselves in it?
