Why understanding your customers is good for business.

Customers bring business, that’s a no brainer. I could probably end this post right here. But how do you really get to know your customers, understand their needs, how do you communicate with them, where do you find them, and more importantly how do you find the customers who are not yet customers? It might just seem a bit too difficult to try to answer all these questions, but getting to the bottom of who your customers are is the crux of successful business – it’s about putting the customer at the centre of everything you do. It comes back to the first line of this post – customers bring business – without them you don’t have a business.

So, where do you start?

Let’s think about your products and services – what are you offering, and what type of person is most likely to need or want this product or service? From this, start to create a ‘pen portrait’ – this is an informal description of a person or group of people:

• How old are they?
• What’s their gender?
• What’s their income?
• Are they married, do they have children?
• What do they like to do on the weekend – their hobbies, interests, likes and dislikes?
• What do they watch on TV, what music do they listen to?

All of these questions will help to narrow down your target customer, and direct you as to where to find them, where to market to them, how to market to them, how to be relevant to them, and so on. Most importantly, when you start to understand your customer better, you can start to adapt every part of your business to attract these customers:

• Train your sales staff on how to talk to your customers
• Adapt your email marketing to better engage your customers
• Develop your products or services to stay relevant to your customers, etc.

Doing these things sets you on the path to being a more customer centric business, which will bring customer growth, loyalty and advocacy. So, as a business owner, it’s crucial to take every advantage to outsmart your competition and build upon your customer knowledge.

If you are interested in growing your customers and developing repeat business, let’s have a chat. I can help with:

• Identifying your target market
• Developing a marketing strategy
• Developing a customer journey map
• Creating more profit for your business