Forgotten Marketing – Who Is The Customer?
Marketing is all about the customer. The customer dictates what you sell and how, so it’s surprising how many companies neglect to focus on their clients. To be successful in marketing – you need to know who the customer is, what their needs are and what they think about your company. And that starts with a survey of sorts, but for your business not your potential customers. If you don't know enough about your own business' marketing and clientele—then start there!
What do current customers think? What do prospective customers want? How do they perceive our company now? You need to answer these questions first before getting too far into market research or advertising campaigns without doing any self reflection. It is important to know the customer, because without customers you cannot be successful in any business.
In this fourth post about forgotten marketing concepts, I'm going to talk about how a company can determine who their customers are and how they can create a more successful business.
WHAT IS YOUR CUSTOMER?
A customer is not just a person that pays money for your products but also the person you aim your marketing at. You need to think of who your customer is; who they are and what they do before you think of whom you will sell to. For example, if you are selling clothes you may have young people as a target group but also some older women. This is because the habits of the young people are different from those of the older women.
WHO ARE YOUR CUSTOMERS?
A customer is the person who actually buys your product or service. But it goes deeper than that. A customer is a person who comes into contact with your marketing and wants to buy your product or service in the future! In order for a customer to be valuable, they must be ‘in-market’ for your product. That means that they need what you have and they want it now .
-Who are the target market? Who would buy your product? Or more importantly, who would use it and is this demographic likely to use it again in the future?
So how do you determine all of this information about your customers? To start with, you need to get in-market for your products or services, you need to know who your customer is. In order to do this you need a sample. A sample is like a snapshot taken of someone’s personality. It shows something that they have done in life before or what they have said previously, but also some of their habits (maybe even their likes/dislikes). You can then see who is likely to buy from you.
A SAMPLE OF YOURSELVES
To find out who your customer is you need a sample of you. Ask your current customers, or just people that are already in-market for your product or service, some questions. A good place to start is to ask them what they would want from your products or services if they could have anything in the world. Notice I said in the world-see if they reference any other company's products or services and how it might be changed by yours.
These are a good starting point for questions, but the most important thing here is that you don't compare yourself to anyone else. Just ask them what they want from your products or services. This way you can see what they think of you and if there are any improvements that can be made. Next, get as many people to respond as possible so you have a big enough sample size so it is accurate.
The questions in the survey should be open-ended, which means there isn’t a set answer to them. This way the customer will have more freedom to explain what they want instead of choosing from a list of answers (which may not even be applicable). And the more people that respond the more accurate it will be.
Once you have a sample of your current customers, you can see what they like about your company and what they don't like. This can help you to change things that the customers don't like so that they might be in-market for your products or services. Of course this will not happen overnight and there are some things that are impossible to change such as price or product design, so place these considerations lower on your list of priorities. The trick is to make sure that every customer matters and that no one is forgotten.
Once you are done with the sample of your current customers, you need to find out who your other customers are. These are people who are in-market for your product but may not yet be aware of it.
WHO ARE YOUR OTHER CUSTOMERS?
These customers may already be buying from your competitors or they might not even know that you exist yet and so they can’t buy from you. You need to reach these people too because they will eventually become one of two groups: a new customer or an existing customer.
Conclusion
With this post, I hope that you learn a few marketing tricks to try out in your own business. Remember that the topic of forgotten marketing is more about psychology than it is about chemistry (although chemistry is a part of marketing). This means that you have to have good ideas and be able to communicate them in a way that the people will understand. You also have to make sure your customers know about your products and services because if they don’t you won’t be able to market them properly. So now you know who your customer is and who others are but what do they want