As an independent business owner, one of your key interests is finding and keeping customers. Successful businesses may proclaim that product-based strategies work the best; others tote customer-based strategies. Let’s take a look at customers and figure out how a focus on them can bring more of them to you.
Identify your Customers
Think about the product or service you are promoting and determine who would make the best use of it. What does that customer look like? Is it a he or a she–old or young–active or sedentary? Describe your target customer in as many words as possible, because those descriptors will become key when you are creating your marketing campaign.
Build a Profile
Using the description that you have created of your target customer, now you need to focus not only on WHO your customers are but WHAT they want and WHY. Create a new list of the attributes of your product or service, described in as much detail as you did for your potential customers. What we want to find here is a way to match the two–the target customer with your product or service. This will help you determine how to reach and engage those customers. You will need to figure out how the features of what you are promoting are tailored to these new potential customers. That match makes your customers like any other asset your business has–providing returns over time all because of the marketing investment you are making to attract them.
Now Let’s Strategize
You now have some fresh data–about your customers and about the features of your product or service. It’s now time to apply the 4 P’s of marketing: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion–and create those links between them. Look at your product and determine a fair price for it. You might want to drop the price for a promotion to encourage more sales. You might want to have a contest to give an extra gift to the first 10 or 20 customers who purchase an item on one certain day or during a weekend. Allow yourself creative ways to connect customer and price. As for the place, how are you going to sell? In person? Online? Now figure out how to reach out to have them come to you. Will you advertise locally with a flyer or an advertisement on Craigslist or Nextdoor? Or will you create an online marketing campaign like the one Online Sales Pro offers with its Express Setup?
A business cannot run without a faithful base of customers, but initially that base must be built. Focus on your customers and figure out the best way to reach out to them, so they identify with you and your product or service and purchase them and then tell others. Want to learn more about how to reach customers? Join us at Online Sales Pro and see how!
