You think you know your customers. But, do you?
“All of your customers are partner in your mission”. Whenever someone asks me about how a business can keep customers happy, this quote from Shep Hyken comes out from my mouth.
A customer will pay for your product or services. But, only if you are offering a solution for some problem that he/she is facing. The question is how will you sell a solution when you don’t know the problem?
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This is the reason why it becomes imperative for you to know your customer. So, how well do you know your customers? I am going to share some points here that will help you to get answer to this question -
Do you speak the same language as they do?
Business is always a two way communication. Your actions and your brand must resonate with whatever the customer says. And, it must reciprocate.
Take a small example here. If you are running a project management tool targeting managers, you cannot use too many informal verbatims in brand building activities. You must stick to a more formal communication. Similarly if you are into something fun, then you cannot afford to be formal in your brand message.
In a way, you must speak in a language that the customer speaks to strike that chord. This will help to leave an impression and fetch his attention towards your brand.
Are you present where your customers are?
The days when a telephonic support was the only way for customers to reach a brand are long gone. We are in an age where you must make your brand’s presence felt wherever the customers are.
Social media is a great example of this. It has emerged as the potential goldmine for businesses. A business without a strong social media presence cannot expect to be on top of the game in today’s scenario.
But, you need to figure out which platform out of all is best suited for your brand. There is no point in putting meticulous efforts on building your brand on instagram, when your potential audience have proclivity towards twitter.
You need to fetch the numbers. Run the metrics. And, figure out where your potential audience are present. Based on that create a branding strategy.
How much importance do you give to customer feedback?
Customer feedback is the most important thing for a business. A big mistake, however, that marketing teams make is to focus only on the negative feedback. We have all heard about the stories of successful business learning from their mistakes. And, making the most of negative feedback from their customers to reach on top.
Yes, it is important to consider negative feedback to find the areas of improvement. But, you cannot always look down upon the positive feedback from your loyal customers.
You need to treat both positive and negative feedback equal. While negative feedback works as a source of improvement from your current levels. Positive feedback helps to capture the attention of new users.
Do you have actionable plan to use that feedback?
Acquiring customer data is a great way to analyze customer behavior. You might use various methods to gather customer feedback and their behavioral statistics. For instance, feedback forms, analytics and more. But, what next? What are you going to do with these numbers? Do you have a plan in mind on how to use this data?
Remember, customer data is of no use as long as you have an actionable plan on how to make the most out of it. You might be sitting on a huge pile of data from customer information. But, as long as you don’t know what’s next, this data is of no value.
You must know how to analyze this data. Based on the analysis you must take actions. These actions will help to improve not just your product/service, but its brand value as well.
Knowing your customer is not just about creating a product that fits within their needs. But, it is more about making sure that the customers knows you are well-versed with those needs. The points mentioned above will help you to achieve that.
Once you know the customer, you can create branding strategies to connect with them. And, sell your product service as a problem solver!
I hope you are able to resonate with the thought. And, if you are still failing to make your brand’s presence felt in the market, then the tips mentioned above will come to help.
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Vartika Kashyap is a seasoned marketing professional who is an expert in digital marketing and entrepreneurship. She’s been featured among LinkedIn’s Top Voices for the year 2016. She currently runs the marketing team at ProofHub — a project management software for teams of all sizes. Connect with Vartika on LinkedIn, Medium and Twitter.
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Originally published at LinkedIn.com
