I am sure you know that your business doesn’t exist base on your demands or needs alone. No matter how you like a business, if there are no customers to patronize you the business cannot continue. that is why it is important to know as much as you can about a customer generally and your customers specifically. This post talks about 3 things that you must know about a customer in general so that you can apply them as you grow and develop your business.
- You should identify your customers.
Who exactly is your customer? It is very important for you to have a specific targeted audience which you will focus on. This will make your branding more unique and distinguished in the market. Your product determines your customers. It’s that which you supply to the market that will tell you who exactly to mark as your customer. You cannot be selling learning materials and call a doctor or a hospital your customer. It’s just like giving me a mirror as a birthday gift. Want to know why? Well Icannot see (I mean blind.)Also, you cannot call a caterer your customer when you sell cement and brick. Identify your customers. Starting with some of their features like their gender, age, location.
- You must strategize ways to reach your customers.
After you identify your exact customers, the next thing is to find possible ways to get your product to them because as excellent as your product is, if you cannot take it to where your customers can access it, you will be left with yourself to buy it. To avoid this tragedy, you can apply these strategies:
- Have a good and well managed distribution channels. Get yourself connected with partners or dealers who can get your product right in front of your targeted audience.
- Advertise, promote and campaign. Advertisement promotions and campaigns are ways to create awareness for your product therefore, employ these ways either online or offline. A product always needs to be made desirable for customers. For example, large corporations like MTN, Coca-Cola still do adverts, promotions and campaigns so, how about a starter or a small-scale business?
- A customer must be satisfied.
A customer is always needed for a business to thrive and for this reason, he must be satisfied with what you have to offer if not, you will lose him along with others he has influence on. When I was in secondary school, I use to make bags, necklaces, belt with beads and one day I reported a staff of the school for refusing to pay me my money. after she had ordered me to make a bag for her. You may want to know the whole story but is very long. I remember this incident because I got to know something in the process. And the thing was that “the customer is always right.” “The customer is always right” was what one of the female staff who were assigned to judge the case told me. Since then I always ensure that I communicated properly with my customers to avoid misunderstanding and ensure that they are 100% satisfied with what they demanded.
Your customers are those who see value or need or want what you sell and buy it from you. For your business to stay in market, you must know who exactly your customers are, what they want, where they are and how you can reach or advertise your product to them and convince them to buy. In this process, how you treat your customers is very critical to your business. Earlier I told you that I was told that the customer is always right. This saying was popularised by pioneering and successful American retailers such as Harry Gordon Selfridge, John Wanamaker and Marshall Field. They advocated that customer is always right to make businesses priorities the satisfaction of their customers because it is one of the major components of sustainment in the market. As a business person and a starter, you are the everything of your enterprise. The owner, administrator, accountant, salesman etc. therefore, you are responsible for every operation needed for your success and good customer experience is not left out.
To wrap up, 3 things you must know about customers are: identify them, reach them and make them satisfied. If you can do this in your business efficiently, you will be smiling as you get positive returns.