Beverlee Rasmussen CEC PCC Choose a typical customer that buys often from your company. What drives them, winds them up, and makes them do what they do? What makes them tick? When you answer that, you will have all the information you need to create a stellar marketing campaign.
Do you know your customers’ needs?
First, consider these questions:
- What is on their mind when they think about doing business with you?
- How is what you offer going to either give them pleasure or take away their pain?
- If they are a returning customer, why do they keep coming back?
- What words do they use to describe their wants and needs?
- What are they influenced by? Media, environment, time of day?
When you know WHY your customers buy from you, it’s easier to adjust your marketing to 1) retain long-term customers and 2) get new customers.
Retaining customers
When you know what your current customers like, you can keep giving them what they want! You don’t need to reinvent the wheel all the time. If what you’re doing is working, keep doing it!
It is way more expensive to acquire a new customer than it does to keep existing customers happy. Consider that probability of a sale from a new customer is only five-twenty percent, whereas, from an existing customer, it is between sixty-seventy percent.
Customer needs in marketing
When you know your customer needs and habits, you can use that information to expand your customer base. Here are two examples!
Example 1
Let’s say you notice your customers are always buying between 12-1 pm.
You realize that most of your customers are working 9-5 pm in the nearby office buildings and they only have time to buy your product on their lunch.
Two ideas come to mind for how you could use this information to get more customers:
- Your customers are likely business employees and owners. Join your local rotary or business bureau. It’s likely other business people will need your product. You can market your business by word of mouth.
- You could increase your hours so you are open until 6 pm. This extra hour gives time for the people who can’t make it on their lunch.
Example 2
It’s also helpful to note what words your customers are using to describe your product. This is a simple but powerful way to tap into your customer’s needs for a marketing campaign.
Let’s say you sell Cuckoo clocks. You are advertising them as “authentic antique clocks” but your customers keep leaving reviews saying “I love these vintage art pieces!”.
This shows you two things:
- Your customers view the clocks as art pieces. To them, it’s more important how it looks than how it functions. In your next round of marketing, you could focus on promoting beauty and design.
- They use the word ‘vintage’ instead of ‘antique’. Look into the connotations of these words. Antique often means old. Where vintage means “trendy again”. Next time use the word vintage in your marketing and measure the responses. You may be surprised to see an increased interest in your ads.
What will your next marketing campaign be?
What your customer needs and wants is KEY to any marketing campaign. A flashy campaign with a huge budget will be less effective than a well-informed, customer-driven, low-budget campaign.
Until next time, enjoy your Entrepreneurial Journey!
The Small Business Field Guide
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