Who is Your Customer?

Your customer is as basic as someone who buys your services and products. The two basic types of customers that buy are:

An Individual who buys from you for personal use and,

A business that buys from you for business operations.

Defining the Ideal Customer

In defining the ideal customer, it becomes paramount to conduct a thorough demographic profiling. This demographic research would include customers’ age, income, gender, and other common characteristics.

After which, you can then define the goal you want to achieve with that set of customers.

Customer Pain Point

In our thorough research as a business, we have come to realise that customer pain points fall into these four categories, which are:

Productivity Pain Point:

This concerns the quality of the product offering, whether in a service or product transaction. It defines the dissatisfaction that arises when a product or service does not meet the promises made by the business.

Process Pain Point: This includes design flaws, confusing instructions, and any other operations that define the process of rendering the services. For some customers, the complaint would be about the lazy attitude, the boredom, or the slow manner that comes with using the service or product. It addresses user experience challenges. We can see this pain point among bank customers while using the banking services and platforms.

Support Pain Point: Customer support service can be very frustrating, with many complaints ranging from slow response times to inadequate technical support.

Financial Pain Point: This talks about the value/worth that customers complain about. What is on the mind of every buyer or patron is whether their purchase is worth it. They often feel scammed or cheated when the value of the product or service does not match the money spent.

How to Get More Customers

Through extensive research and insights from the world’s top marketers, we’ve developed strategies that consistently attract more customers. Before we delve into the core strategies, here are six ways to get and retain customers.

Get your first Customers: the first step is to get them. Whether you are launching a startup or an existing business seeking new customers, you should have strategies to acquire them. One way to do this is to be strategic with generosity. You can offer freebies in a targeted way to ensure you receive referrals and create a feedback system. Offer value for free and use this opportunity to gather contacts and addresses of potential customers.

Increase Your Visibility: Be everywhere customers can see you. Be consistent with your visibility. This way, you become more visible to people. Billboards, flyers, and, of course, the digital platforms are easy options you should employ.

Do More Marketing: Engage across all marketing channels. From online to offline, word-of-mouth to paid marketing.

Participate More in Your Local community: Join all the various clubs, industry groups, and associations that matter. It is easy to leverage your local community because they know you.

Proper Customer Retention: Have appropriate customer engagement and retention.

Create More Irresistible Offers: Ensure you deliver exceptional value. This way, customers will always want to do business with you.

Five Core Customer Retention Strategies

Warm Calls: These calls are relationship-based contacting. It’s about you reaching out to people you know. You start by writing down the names of everyone you know, from church and old schoolmates to business affiliates. As a business person, you collect contacts wherever you go. Then, send personalised messages to each of them; offer value —show them why they should patronise you, more than mere friendship or acquaintance.

Cold Calls: Reach out to people you don’t know. In doing this, you can have a generalised message. Flyers, billboards, banners, emails, or other forms of messaging can be used for cold calls. Then ensure you follow up with those who contact you afterwards.

Content Calls: Use all the content forms you know —texts, videos, graphics —anything that shows what you offer falls into these categories. Here, copywriting becomes paramount.

Advertisement Calls:  Run ads consistently. Have a budget for advertisement. Let your ads call attention to what you offer.

Excellent customer Service: Everyone would like to be treated preferentially. So, learn to treat your customers as kings and queens.

Key Emotions that Influence Sales

Different feelings move different customers to make purchases. While some can be angry customers (which every business owner learns to avoid), others can be impulsive or buy out of shame, fear or pride. So, every business owner learns how to sell with an understanding of the following emotions that trigger sales:

Belief: You should not expect people to believe and buy into what you, the business owner, do not believe in—sales about beliefs. People tend to trust and feel a connection with a product or service.

Love: Again, love what you do, and know what your customers love and are passionate about.

Fear: People buy because they fear missing out on a huge offer or the benefits a product provides.

Ecstasy: Learn to sell the experience of the benefit, and not just the benefit alone. You do this by creating the experience and showing them the ecstasy they will experience while using the product.

The Different Kind of Customers Your Business Should Have

Referral Customers: Customers acquired through product or service recommendations from past or existing customers.

Loyal Customers: These customers are your long-term customers who make repeated purchases. They are a valuable asset to your business survival. They love everything about your brand and even go so far as to advocate for and refer your products and services to others.

Discount Seekers: these are price-sensitive customers who prioritise the best deals, lowest prices, and percentage or quantity discounts.

Advertising Customers: these are customers gotten through advertisement efforts

Impulsive Customers: Customers who end up making more purchases than they intended. They always buy on impulse, without calculating. For these kinds of customers, maximise upselling and cross-selling.

Angry Customer: These customers are always angry and never satisfied. The best thing to do is avoid them at all costs.

Research-Based Customers: These customers are identified after thorough research.

New Customers: Customers acquired recently.