If Your Days’ Are Daunting And You Experience Nightmare, You Must Read This.
I am counting my days, and the nights being restless until I learnt about how to know my customers better.
With the fast-changing technology, businesses have a poor vision for the future. Rapid changes are reducing sales volumes, skyrocketing cost of advertising, failing businesses.
Days are daunting, and nightmares keep you awake.
Not anymore!
Gratitude is the mother of virtues.
Let your dominant thought be: “I am grateful because…” — Mahatria.
With prayers of Gratitude towards the internet, computer, my ability and this day and all I have.
Learnings change our perceptions and clear our vision. A lot is happening in the technological space day by day. “Everything that helps us to efficient is honourable,” says Deepak Kanakaraju.
One of the greatest things about Deepak is that he is authentic and shares everything with us. So, he shared that the first assignment completion rate was 87%. The success attributes to the positive pressure to complete and the rewards thereafter.
Let me share in brief about class 2 learnings.
The Art of Focus
Human beings by default cannot focus on too many things at a time. Multitasking is possible to some extent. But the ability to focus and recollect diminishes in multitasking.
Concentrating our days filled with distraction is difficult. With phone calls, messages, meetings, WhatsApp, email, traffic & travel produces distractions. Plus our daily chores and caring our loved ones, amid getting the work done for our customers. Days are daunting in multitasking only to forget what I did yesterday.
Distraction can cause more harm to our brains than drugs. You know the case or texting and driving. I too have hit my car in traffic once when I had to text an important message, but I didn’t hurt anyone by god’s grace. Since then, I have never dared to text while driving.
My habit of journaling for the last 7 years helped me improve my discipline. Discipline helps to reduce the pressure of the ‘To do’ and helps to focus on one task at a time.
There is a good test to find out your ability to focus or focus deficiency. If you’re curious, check how consistent are you in finishing your tasks on time. And how often you are late for meetings.
Learn — Do — Teach (Golden Triangle)
Learning that lasts is always hands-on. Consider riding a bike or driving a car, or to learn a new language, a musical instrument or a new technology. You can’t learn it through theory. One must have a series of experimental practice to learn them. Through practice, you gain momentum. Experience can be through trial and error or by hand-holding to do what seems impossible at the start.
It can be as a series of failures that leads to success. e.g. A baby tries to walk, falls many times and those trials lead to successful balancing and walking on his own. All babies do that with enthusiasm and the parents know he will do it. And the baby walks with success and smiles to the applauds.
When I read, I remember. I try to do I recollect only bits and pieces of the reading. When I do, learning becomes a concept. I teach, I realise that I need to create a set of instructions for others to follow. I learn how the concept came into existence.
It is important to teach others so that they can get success without too many failures. Teaching reinforces the teacher of his learnings. The teacher experiences a new level of learning than doing and learning.
Mistakes are future-benefits
Anyone who has never made mistakes has never tried anything new — Albert Einstein
Failures and mistakes are part of learning, the more the trials, better learning. If you have a coach or a mentor, you step up from failure to success by the mentor’s experience.
Marketing is about Communication well received
When it comes to marketing, surprises are not welcomed. The customer needs useful information about the products and services in offer. Customer should feel value in your offer.
Communication is three types: one to one, one to many, and many to one.
Marketing in one to one, Mass communication is one to many and feedback is many to one. A marketer should communicate one to one, to serve the purpose of marketing.
A digital marketer is a marketer who has a technology edge to leverage his communication. But if you cannot communicate one to one, you are bound to hit the hurdle.
Being an Authentic Marketer
I like to be as authentic as I am with my friends, and family to anyone in my business too. I know I may not be popular for not being diplomatic, but by nature, I don’t like to fake. I always give feedback to people one to one, rather talking behind them. In the long run, it proves beneficial to be authentic. Deepak attributes his huge fan following on for being authentic.
The buzzword among trainers is to “fake till you make it”. But it is always graceful to be authentic, be who you are to communicate better. The thing about faking is that it shows up in communication.
Traits of a Better Marketer
A better marketer is rich in life experience. Has learnings and is a traveller, and is multilinguistic.
Audience or customers are sample groups of people among the population. Everyone cannot be your audience, and if it is so, then you don’t have an audience.
Defining your target audience (Customer Avatar)
Avatar is a manifestation, appearance, or incarnation as per wiki. It is easier to look for customers if you know the type of consumers who will buy from you. Without knowing who your ideal customer is, you wouldn’t know where to start looking.
A crystal-clear picture of the ideal customer contains demographics and psychographics. This information helps you to target marketing communications and gain traffic and conversion.
You got to narrow down the specs to one single person. Your imagination can be approximate at the start, but being 70% right is good enough to start. Targeting the ideal customer avatar will get a few customers. With new customers, collect demographic and psychographic information. This will help you refine your ideal customer avatar. You can get this information through online forms like google forms, typeform, etc.
Design forms to fetch data, then redesign them to get better information. Ask better questions. Sometimes all this won’t be enough to identify customer psychographics. You got to speak to a few customers to know more about them.
Change is the only constant. Changing ourselves to customer needs will keep us stable.
E.g., I’m in the business of social wellbeing of teenagers, the age group falls between 13 to 19 years. I have two categories in this age group, separated by gender.
Since I am a start-up, I created a Customer Avatar Form on Google Forms.
Based on the responses, here are the two categories of customer avatars.
Varun is my ideal avatar a 16-year-old, boy. He has a mobile phone, a personal computer or a tablet. He has an internet connection at home. He knows to search for information for his wellbeing, seek answers for his questions. He entered college. He needs to talk to someone in whom he can confide other than his parents. He is full of doubts and needs clarification. His search is on subjects like body-image, pear groups, career options, pocket money. He wants to know his rights, personal values, self-esteem, grooming tips & hygiene issues. His interest in girlfriend & sexual matters is high.
Sailee is my ideal avatar a 15-year-old, girl. She has a mobile phone, a personal computer or a tablet. She has an internet connection at home. She knows to search for information for his wellbeing, seek answers for her questions. She entered college. She needs to talk to someone in whom he can confide other than her parents. She is full of doubts and needs clarification. Her search is on subjects like body-image, pear groups, career options, clothes & accessories. She wants to know her rights, personal values, self-esteem, grooming tips & hygiene issues. Her interest in girlfriend & sexual matters is high.
Focus on the centre, not on the border
When I collect data, the data will spread across the age group, the major criteria for the avatar. I have to select the mean age that falls at 16 years. In other words, 16 years is the largest no of boys and 15 years for girls in my separate sample population.
Focusing at the centre lets us serve a larger group, and in a way, the spread also gets served.
Awkwardness is an indicator of learning
What comes to mind reading all these is that “this is awkward”, right! Yes, it is awkward, but Awkwardness is an indicator of learning.
Deepak says, “Remain in the awkwardness and learn, only then you will surprise yourself with the results.”
This is not Final! It doesn’t stop here. Keep refining your customer avatar, to understand your customers better. Getting to know your customers well is to stay at the peak of your business. See you soon, keep reading my blogs.
