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How to attract the right customers

Silvia Myers

Silvia Myers, Founder of Bright Cherry

28 March 2018

I started my business about 3 years ago and I thought I had it all figured out. I knew how to run a business, what products and services to offer, how to market myself, and all the steps to make my business succeed. When I launched my business, however, not much happened.

What did I miss?

I didn’t have many customers. Basically, there was no demand for the product and services that I was offering. Quickly, I realized that I didn’t know my customers enough —I didn’t understand their wants and needs, and the unique problem that I was solving.

“I soon realized that over 90% of businesses don’t make it past 12 months and the main reason is that they don’t really understand who their customers are. Therefore, they can’t really connect to the right target group, the right niche, and consequently, cease existing..“

Because of this realization, I want to help you avoid the mistakes I did and make your business succeed by understanding your customers.

Understand your customer niche: Find your ideal customer

The first thing that you need to do is to truly understand your customer niche. As a small business owner, you just chase the dollars and whatever leads you can get—then you end up spreading yourself too thin. You want to be everything to everyone, in order to please that handful of small customers you have. In the long run, this is not helping you. It’s wasting your time and energy. It is taking away your focus from that niche customer that you can help most and with whom you can deliver the best results. You have to ask yourself, who is that person you can help the most?

Solve a unique problem

The next thing you need to know is, what is that unique problem that you’re trying to solve which nobody else is solving? What makes you stand out on the market? What is the value that your service is adding to your customers?

The unique problem that you’re solving will help you figure out what business you are in. More importantly, it will help you understand your competitive environment. Leverage on your customers’ emotional state The value that you provide your customers goes back to the emotional state your customers are in when they’re purchasing from you. For some businesses, their customers are happy when they’re purchasing from them; while for others, their customers might be sad, frustrated, or angry while paying for their service.

A perfect example of this is my customers who pay for my services after having tried different strategies to boost their business but didn’t work and don’t know why. So the emotional state that they’re in when they come to me is a little bit angry or frustrated. The reason it is important for you to know the emotional state your customers have when they buy your products and services is for you know how to better connect with them. This will help you identify what is going to resonate with your customers when you’re connecting with them.

Appease their Wants, Deliver their Needs

So, how does it all work? Our customers have wants and needs, right? You tell them what they want to hear from you but it is what they need that you are going to give. And if you do this, they’ll be your customers for life. They’ll buy from you the whole suite and services you’ve got to offer.

Adapt to changes

What if your customers change and what you’ve figured out will no longer be applicable? Well, that is an everyday reality. Our customers change all the time, and so should businesses. You just have to make it a habit to reassess your customers, their problems, emotions, wants, and needs every 6-12 months, and make small tweaks every time, to make your business adapt to their changing behavior.

As long as you keep in touch with your customers and have that understanding of when they are changing and how that is changing, then I can guarantee you, it will deliver great business results.

Share with me your story

What are the challenges in attracting the right customers in your business or industry? How easy or difficult is it to connect to your customer niche and serve their needs? What do you do in order to adapt to changing customer requirements? I’d love to hear from you. Please share, I always respond to all questions and comments.

Silvia is the Founder of Bright Cherry, a customer centric consultancy specialising in helping entrepreneurs and small business owners understand their customers and build successful businesses around that. The fact is that 90% of entrepreneurs fail and one of the reasons is that majority of businesses don’t understand their target market. Get in touch to join the growing network of successful entrepreneurs committed to reach new heights through delivering to their customers’ wants and needs.

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