How Well Do You Really Know Your Customers and Clients?
By Stu Leventhal ~ Editor (Guru Marketing Tips)
The customers and clients that you currently have are more important than the new customers and possible new clients that you seek. Keep your current clientele happy and they will bring you their friends and associates to do business with you too!
Yes, a referral based business is the strongest business you can operate.
A company’s wellbeing sure depends on finding and attracting new business. No matter how successful you are, you always want to grow and expand your customer base and thus gain more profits. Many increase their customers by expanding the sales territory they serve. This may include branching off into a, new-to-you, sector of the market place or marketing more aggressively to another customer demographic that you do not yet do so much business with.
Still, no matter what your business expansion plans are, you will do much better when you run the ideas past your current customers first. If you sell mainly to young single folks and you wish to go after seniors; well, don’t you believe that your younger loyal customers can help you by introducing your products and services and brand name to the older adults in their family and at work and their neighbors who are seniors? Of course they can!
Your current clients and loyal customers are your mouth pieces. Word-of-mouth advertising is still the most influential marketing a company can get and it is still the most elusive and hard to secure, too. You want to please your clients and customers; you also want them to like you more than they do your competitors. You want to crush your competition and that means giving more than the usual satisfaction to your customers and clients because your foes are always out to steal your clients away from you.
You do not want your products and services to be the best you want your employees to be the best too. The object is to make memorable experiences out of every engagement your company has with a customer. Impressing your customer usually requires you to do something extra that is not expected. Going the extra mile builds customer loyalty. But what should you do and where do you start?
Depending on your type of business, you can really make an impression often just by knowing your customers by their names when they frequent your establishment. If you do business on the phone, can you recognize someone from their voice and are you saying hi with their name? If they walk into your shop, do you smile as if you are glad to see them and greet them by their name? Are you using their first names when you email them or including a personal note when you snail mail a marketing piece or are all your messages just generic, one size fits all, emails and mailers?
Yes, advertising is easier to get out there when you do not take the time to make your sales pitch more personal. But more personal communication has much more success and is worth the extra effort!
Did you know that a more personal email subject phrase will get more people to open your emails and keep your emails from going directly into their spam filter file? If you are making the effort to craft a great email message, you want it to get opened; don’t you?
The thing is, besides when your customers do business with you, how much else do you really know about them personally, outside of their business persona? I would not say to you snoop on them but I would say converse with them on social media so you can build some other ways to connect besides just thru business and commerce issues. Maybe you’ll find that a big majority of your customer base are vegetarians so you can post a great nutritional vegetable recipe for them to enjoy. Ask them to post their favorite recipes to share with the rest of your vegan followers.
Perhaps you’ll find that your customers like; scuba diving or soccer or building robots which has gotten very popular these days. If you like any of those things too then by all means talk about them. You do not just have to talk about your field of expertise you can get less formal and relax with your topics. Be human, show you are a real person that your customers can relate too.
Do you prefer a certain charity that you support? Ask your customers if any of them too support your same preferred charity? Ask what other charities your customers support and why.
People have lives outside of work and shopping and doing business. They have families and friends and obligations and interests, hobbies, dreams… They like certain sports teams and celebrities. You can have enjoyable conversation and debates if you can get your customers to open up more to you.
Knowledge allows you to serve people better. Your ultimate goal is for your bond with one another to grow at least slightly stronger with your clients every time you engage with them.
More often than not, your customers will not volunteer info about themselves. But, knowing things about your clients that have seemingly nothing to do with your business relationship can make your relationships more special and long lasting.
You want referral business and good references and some flattering online reviews; this requires building a customer relationship that elevates your customers to feeling that they are more than just someone you pitch your products and services to. Your customers must think you are calling them to find out how they are doing, not just because it is the end of the month and you have not hit your sales quota yet.
Real interest, concern and empathy must be conveyed or you will come off as insincere. Sure you want suggestions about possible new profit making products you can create and ideas on how to improve your services. You want to hear what you are doing good at so you can keep doing it and even do more. You also need insight into what areas of your business need work on. You can benefit too from hearing about your competition so you can keep tabs on what business moves they are making. Lots of things get solved by better communicating.
Can you see how understanding your customers, means doing more than just analyzing their purchasing histories and buying habits? When was the last time you e-mailed your clients a questionnaire? Do you include satisfaction report cards in your product delivery packages and with your snail mailed bills? You need to do the work that makes it easy for your customers to give you feedback as well as some new info about them.
You want to know where on social platforms you can engage with them. Would they like getting a monthly email newsletter or would some other means of staying in touch be better for them.
Have you tried hosting an online webinar for your best clients or customers? Do you give special discounts, coupons, freebees and rewards to your best customers? How about inviting your customers to an offline, meet and greet at a local restaurant or popular music club or banquet hall to show your appreciation for their business. You can even invite or hire a special guest speaker to make the event educational and thus extra valuable for your customers.
But again it all comes down to learning from your customers themselves what they like and enjoy, so you can bring it to them. Once you know what motivates your customers you can give them more of it. This will get them to talk about you with the people they know who usually care about the same things that they do, thus you gain clients and new customers. You also can get your same current customers to buy more from you or use your services more. You can add a new service so you do more business with your current customers too. it is all about knowing your customers better. What are their problems? Who else do they do business with? Maybe you can partner up with someone in another non competing industry that is also connecting to your same pool of potential clients.
Do you know how your fans are finding your webpages? Your website should have analytics that can tell you from where in cyberspace they are arriving on your site. Now you know where you should place an ad to get more people like your current customers engaging with you. Your analytics should also shed light on which of your webpages are the most popular and what topics discussed are bringing you the most visitors. What pages do your visitors spend the most time on? Now you know what kind of posts and articles and discussions your customers want more of.
Which videos do your visitors watch the entire video? Which vids do your customers view only for a few seconds before clicking away? This tells you what kind of vids to add more of to your site. When you have analytics on your website you can test things and see the data and stats to learn if they worked. Remember, people do not always tell you what they really like but statistics tell you al that you need to know.
The reviews that your customers leave on business review sites about you and about your competitors also gives you more insight into what customers are really feeling. Knowing your customers better will make your advertising better because you will design your ads and commercials in a way that they can relate to. You will blog more successfully and social post things that gain you more customers because you know the kinds of post your customers engage with. Your product development is easy, when you know more about your customers too!
Every company is in business to serve their customers. Making the time to find out more about these loyal customers especially pays you dividends like nothing else!
You simply have to go the extra mile to know what pleases your customers if you wish to be the best in your industry! Tap into your customers’ aspirations and learn what really makes them tick and you become the company that all other companies want to emulate. That in its self will resonate with your customers and allow you to connect more deeply and meaningfully. Everyone will soon recognize that you are the leader in your field.
A big deal is when a company can connect in a human way not as a company which has no emotions and thus gain trust and loyalty because usually companies are thought of as being just profit motivated. Your company is full of real people. Your employees, even if they are sales folks can still connect as humans. Humans can also want to do business with you. But your sales team has to prioritize showing their human side as well as showing interest in your customers’ personal life challenges too. Once a deeper relationship is accomplished, it becomes quite difficult for competitors to steal away your customers.
Make a point of taking at least one good customer to lunch each week, just to say thank you for your business and you will surprised how fast your business grows!
Yes, a referral based business is the strongest business you can operate.
A company’s wellbeing sure depends on finding and attracting new business. No matter how successful you are, you always want to grow and expand your customer base and thus gain more profits. Many increase their customers by expanding the sales territory they serve. This may include branching off into a, new-to-you, sector of the market place or marketing more aggressively to another customer demographic that you do not yet do so much business with.
Still, no matter what your business expansion plans are, you will do much better when you run the ideas past your current customers first. If you sell mainly to young single folks and you wish to go after seniors; well, don’t you believe that your younger loyal customers can help you by introducing your products and services and brand name to the older adults in their family and at work and their neighbors who are seniors? Of course they can!
Your current clients and loyal customers are your mouth pieces. Word-of-mouth advertising is still the most influential marketing a company can get and it is still the most elusive and hard to secure, too. You want to please your clients and customers; you also want them to like you more than they do your competitors. You want to crush your competition and that means giving more than the usual satisfaction to your customers and clients because your foes are always out to steal your clients away from you.
You do not want your products and services to be the best you want your employees to be the best too. The object is to make memorable experiences out of every engagement your company has with a customer. Impressing your customer usually requires you to do something extra that is not expected. Going the extra mile builds customer loyalty. But what should you do and where do you start?
Depending on your type of business, you can really make an impression often just by knowing your customers by their names when they frequent your establishment. If you do business on the phone, can you recognize someone from their voice and are you saying hi with their name? If they walk into your shop, do you smile as if you are glad to see them and greet them by their name? Are you using their first names when you email them or including a personal note when you snail mail a marketing piece or are all your messages just generic, one size fits all, emails and mailers?
Yes, advertising is easier to get out there when you do not take the time to make your sales pitch more personal. But more personal communication has much more success and is worth the extra effort!
Did you know that a more personal email subject phrase will get more people to open your emails and keep your emails from going directly into their spam filter file? If you are making the effort to craft a great email message, you want it to get opened; don’t you?
The thing is, besides when your customers do business with you, how much else do you really know about them personally, outside of their business persona? I would not say to you snoop on them but I would say converse with them on social media so you can build some other ways to connect besides just thru business and commerce issues. Maybe you’ll find that a big majority of your customer base are vegetarians so you can post a great nutritional vegetable recipe for them to enjoy. Ask them to post their favorite recipes to share with the rest of your vegan followers.
Perhaps you’ll find that your customers like; scuba diving or soccer or building robots which has gotten very popular these days. If you like any of those things too then by all means talk about them. You do not just have to talk about your field of expertise you can get less formal and relax with your topics. Be human, show you are a real person that your customers can relate too.
Do you prefer a certain charity that you support? Ask your customers if any of them too support your same preferred charity? Ask what other charities your customers support and why.
People have lives outside of work and shopping and doing business. They have families and friends and obligations and interests, hobbies, dreams… They like certain sports teams and celebrities. You can have enjoyable conversation and debates if you can get your customers to open up more to you.
Knowledge allows you to serve people better. Your ultimate goal is for your bond with one another to grow at least slightly stronger with your clients every time you engage with them.
More often than not, your customers will not volunteer info about themselves. But, knowing things about your clients that have seemingly nothing to do with your business relationship can make your relationships more special and long lasting.
You want referral business and good references and some flattering online reviews; this requires building a customer relationship that elevates your customers to feeling that they are more than just someone you pitch your products and services to. Your customers must think you are calling them to find out how they are doing, not just because it is the end of the month and you have not hit your sales quota yet.
Real interest, concern and empathy must be conveyed or you will come off as insincere. Sure you want suggestions about possible new profit making products you can create and ideas on how to improve your services. You want to hear what you are doing good at so you can keep doing it and even do more. You also need insight into what areas of your business need work on. You can benefit too from hearing about your competition so you can keep tabs on what business moves they are making. Lots of things get solved by better communicating.
Can you see how understanding your customers, means doing more than just analyzing their purchasing histories and buying habits? When was the last time you e-mailed your clients a questionnaire? Do you include satisfaction report cards in your product delivery packages and with your snail mailed bills? You need to do the work that makes it easy for your customers to give you feedback as well as some new info about them.
You want to know where on social platforms you can engage with them. Would they like getting a monthly email newsletter or would some other means of staying in touch be better for them.
Have you tried hosting an online webinar for your best clients or customers? Do you give special discounts, coupons, freebees and rewards to your best customers? How about inviting your customers to an offline, meet and greet at a local restaurant or popular music club or banquet hall to show your appreciation for their business. You can even invite or hire a special guest speaker to make the event educational and thus extra valuable for your customers.
But again it all comes down to learning from your customers themselves what they like and enjoy, so you can bring it to them. Once you know what motivates your customers you can give them more of it. This will get them to talk about you with the people they know who usually care about the same things that they do, thus you gain clients and new customers. You also can get your same current customers to buy more from you or use your services more. You can add a new service so you do more business with your current customers too. it is all about knowing your customers better. What are their problems? Who else do they do business with? Maybe you can partner up with someone in another non competing industry that is also connecting to your same pool of potential clients.
Do you know how your fans are finding your webpages? Your website should have analytics that can tell you from where in cyberspace they are arriving on your site. Now you know where you should place an ad to get more people like your current customers engaging with you. Your analytics should also shed light on which of your webpages are the most popular and what topics discussed are bringing you the most visitors. What pages do your visitors spend the most time on? Now you know what kind of posts and articles and discussions your customers want more of.
Which videos do your visitors watch the entire video? Which vids do your customers view only for a few seconds before clicking away? This tells you what kind of vids to add more of to your site. When you have analytics on your website you can test things and see the data and stats to learn if they worked. Remember, people do not always tell you what they really like but statistics tell you al that you need to know.
The reviews that your customers leave on business review sites about you and about your competitors also gives you more insight into what customers are really feeling. Knowing your customers better will make your advertising better because you will design your ads and commercials in a way that they can relate to. You will blog more successfully and social post things that gain you more customers because you know the kinds of post your customers engage with. Your product development is easy, when you know more about your customers too!
Every company is in business to serve their customers. Making the time to find out more about these loyal customers especially pays you dividends like nothing else!
You simply have to go the extra mile to know what pleases your customers if you wish to be the best in your industry! Tap into your customers’ aspirations and learn what really makes them tick and you become the company that all other companies want to emulate. That in its self will resonate with your customers and allow you to connect more deeply and meaningfully. Everyone will soon recognize that you are the leader in your field.
A big deal is when a company can connect in a human way not as a company which has no emotions and thus gain trust and loyalty because usually companies are thought of as being just profit motivated. Your company is full of real people. Your employees, even if they are sales folks can still connect as humans. Humans can also want to do business with you. But your sales team has to prioritize showing their human side as well as showing interest in your customers’ personal life challenges too. Once a deeper relationship is accomplished, it becomes quite difficult for competitors to steal away your customers.
Make a point of taking at least one good customer to lunch each week, just to say thank you for your business and you will surprised how fast your business grows!
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