What You Need to Know About Your Customers
Understanding and relating to customers facilitates sales. It's that simple because, as a business, your goal is to appeal to your customers and their needs! If you are struggling to understand your customers and their needs fully, we suggest going through the following questions, take notes, and adjust your strategy accordingly!
What you need to know about your customers:
1. Who are they?
Knowing your target demographic provides crucial information necessary to optimize your sales. This is the group that is going to make up a majority of your sales, so understanding things such as their age, gender, education, and geographical location is key to being able to produce an offering that they want to purchase and aligns with their lifestyle.
2. What motivates them to buy?
Appealing to customers' motivations behind buying goods and services allows companies to curate products that match these preferences. The most common motives that sway customers to make purchases include for health benefits, to elevate their status, reduce fears, feel accepted (think big trends), and because the offering makes them feel good. Knowing what motivates the majority of your buyers tells you exactly how you should be presenting and marketing your good to future clients.
3. When do they buy?
Being strategic about when you approach consumers is crucial. One of the best ways to do this is to consider exactly when most of your sales occur. Is this around the holiday season or during the summer? Is there a specific day of the week or even time of day which you see the most amount of sales? Once you know these patterns, you should then adjust your strategy to ensure that your customers' needs are met, and your marketing strategy follows these peak times. This might mean ensuring you are fully staffed during peak times and realizing you don't need as many people on call during down periods.
4. How do they make purchases?
Being aware of how customers purchase your offering ensures that your business is using practices that suit your customers' needs. For example, ask yourself, do I make a majority of my profits from online transactions, or face to face interactions? And what form of payment do people mostly use in these transactions? COVID-19 has made this even more important for today, as most businesses have had to switch entirely to online sales. But as a business, it is your responsibility to ensure that your customers are enjoying their purchasing experiences. And if they are not, you need to be making the necessary adjustments to ensure that they are.
5. What do they think about you?
When customers enjoy engaging with a company, this builds positive relationships and facilitates recurring business. To achieve this, your businesses' offerings and actions need to be in line with your audiences' expectations. For example, if your customers heavily value the quality of your offering, the professionalism of it, and delivery time, then these should be your business's top priorities! One of the best ways for your business to know exactly what your customers are thinking and value most is to encourage them to leave honest reviews about their experiences with your product. Make sure you LISTEN to what they have to say and adjust accordingly from there.
Marketing is all about relationships; therefore, knowing your customer's needs, behavior, and expectations is crucial for success!
Written By: Kassidy Aweida, AMR Digital Marketing, Influencer/ Community Manager