Why Knowing Your Customers is Crucial in the 21st Century
You might be a new business owner who believes that automating every process and moving your operations online can save you time and money. You are right, but you are also wrong. Online tools can indeed help you find out more about your market and customers, but if you use one-size-fits-all solutions in your business to simplify your processes, you might be losing out. You must keep an eye on the market’s behavior and your customers’ preferences and needs in order to serve them better than your competition. Find out why it is necessary to know your customers in the 21st century.
What Do Your Customers Really Want?
You must know what your customers really want, and not what they are looking for. They might be searching for the latest handbag, but they really want to be recognized for their fashion sense. They could be looking for a car, but why? Some want a car to simply take them from a to Z, while others enjoy driving and want to take long trips to the country. Without you knowing what the real aspirations of your potential market are, you cannot tailor your marketing messages to their needs. You must play on their emotions that are related to their buying decisions to make them get their credit cards or cash out.
What are their Biggest Challenges?
“Frustrated” by Ashlee Martin is licensed under CC BY 2.0
In order to be successful in any business, you need to know what the greatest challenges of your market are. For example, if you are a web designer, you might think that companies only want a website to be found online. However, there is usually more to it. They might want to stop cold calling and gather signups online, so they can send out personalized messages to their potential buyers. Others want to stop customers calling the office, and need ecommerce solutions for real problems, such as providing effective after-sales support for their clients, or delivering upsell messages without having to make hundreds of phone calls each month. Find out more about your market, by checking relevant forums and social media.
Why Do Your Customers Buy?
To successfully sell your services and products to customers, you need to know what their buying triggers are. Can you make them an irresistible offer? What makes them decide to buy from you and not another similar company? In most cases, the quality of support and customer service plays an important role in customer decisions. In other cases, your market will be more price-sensitive. Without finding out what makes them choose you over your competitor, you will not be able to create a successful sales and marketing strategy. Create surveys and measure customer preferences to tailor your offer to their needs and wants.
What Makes them Smile?
“Customer satisfaction survey” by Kecko is licensed under CC BY 2.0
If you run your business online, you might find it hard to find out what makes your customers happy and content. Thanks to the advancement of business intelligence software, you can now find out a lot more about your buyers and website visitors than ever before. You can install analytics software on your site to monitor customer behavior. You can ask them to fill out a short survey, or get a research company to conduct a short study in your market. You might even be able to purchase industry reports to better understand what makes your customers smile.
What Do They Think about Your Competitors?
To keep your offers competitive, you need to keep an eye on not only your own reputation, but your competitor’s as well. Many small business owners forget about this important aspect, and fail to reposition their brand when market trends change. If your main competitor introduces an extra service free, you will need to come up a way of offering something better, so you don’t lose your market share. Find out what people in your niche don’t like about your competition, and try to do it better. Focusing on this itself can give you a huge competitive advantage.
Whether you are running your business online, or just need to get more customer feedback to change with the market trends, business intelligence implementation can help. It is crucial that you know everything about your niche, trends, technologies, customers, and even competitors, so you can tailor your offers to the needs of your potential and current clients. Use surveys, online feedback forms, and measure your reputation. Use business intelligence software to find out more about the behavior of your website visitors, and you can make continuous improvements in your business.