Want to Really Understand Your Customers? Use These 3 Strategies to Unlock Profitable Insights About Your Market

 

Here’s a huge mistake entrepreneurs make all the time — even experienced ones! 

They make business decisions based on assumptions about their target customers… without stopping to ask real customers what it is they actually want. 

Not even once! 

Those faulty assumptions drive business owners to create offers that don’t sell, marketing messages that don’t convert, and companies that don’t grow. 

And that’s why your #1 task as an entrepreneur should be understanding your customers. Getting to know them — truly, deeply, better than they know themselves.

That’s what we’ll talk about today.

In this week’s article, I’m going to give you 3 actionable strategies for understanding your customers, and how you can leverage that understanding to grow your business!

You will learn:

  • The most effective (and underrated) way to learn more about your customers
  • 3 critical points in the customer journey when you need their input and feedback
  • Why you should care if your target audience loves that one movie or TV show
  • How to use your knowledge about your customers to drive revenue and growth

And more.

Let’s start with the first and most important strategy that, for some reason, scares most business owners to hiccups!

 

Talk to your target customers as much as you can

 

A lot of business owners try to avoid interacting with customers. I know — I don’t understand it either! They think that using a sophisticated, automated sales funnel can replace… you know… actually talking to their target audience and understanding their needs and wants.

I’ll give you one guess about how well that usually goes!

The thing is, your company will not (and cannot) benefit from advanced marketing strategies and tactics if you neglect the fundamentals. And talking to your target customers is as fundamental as it gets.

No matter how much revenue your business is generating; no matter how big the company is; no matter how personally involved you are in the sales and marketing process… 

…you want to have regular, thoughtful conversations with potential and current customers — on every channel you can think of.

  • Over email is my favorite because it allows for detailed answers, yet low pressure
  • Over the phone is great for understanding a customer’s thought process
  • In-person interactions can be amazingly deep and valuable, if hard to set up
  • Even social media chatter can give you useful insights!

These conversations will give you first-hand knowledge about your customers that you can’t get anywhere else. You will learn about what they want, what language they use to describe themselves and their problems, what major struggles they are dealing with, etc.

And then you’ll be able to use these valuable insights for creating bestselling offers, influential content, high-converting sales and marketing copy, and more. Bottom line is, always talk to your customers — the effort will pay off like you wouldn’t believe!

 

Ask for customer feedback at critical stages of their journey

 

When you acquire a new customer, you need to know what specific results they are hoping to achieve. If you skip this step, you’ll have trouble serving the customer at the level they expect (and deserve!).

Similarly, when you’ve delivered the product or service, you need to get the buyer’s feedback about the experience. That way, you’ll know what you did wrong, what you got right, and how to improve that experience in the future.

Ditto for when your relationship with a customer ends because of cancelation, conflict, or for any other reason. I know that asking for feedback in these scenarios can be scary… but if it can help you avoid making the same mistakes in the future, it’s 100% worth it!

In all three cases I’ve just mentioned, you can use simple surveys to uncover your customers’ goals, evaluate their level of satisfaction, and pinpoint your exact mistakes!

There are 3 key milestones in the customer journey when surveys are the most useful:

  1. Onboarding — as your partnership starts, you want to figure out what exactly your customer wants to achieve by working with you. Onboarding surveys also help you figure out potential obstacles and barriers you might face when working together.
  2. Offboarding/debriefing — these surveys help you measure customer satisfaction and identify any areas you could improve, like overall level of service, communication, or product quality. Pro tip: this is also an excellent opportunity to gather testimonials!
  3. Abandonment — you can use abandonment surveys when a customer unsubscribes, cancels, asks for a refund etc. They can give you specific, actionable insights about what went wrong in the relationship (if anything) and how you can avoid the same mistakes in the future.

Keep all your surveys short and sweet, as in “under 10 questions.” Also, give your customers more open-ended questions and fewer multiple choice questions — the first kind are much more useful.

 

Research existing sources of influence on your customers

 

Here’s another way to learn more about your target market…

Pay attention to what influences them.

What do your customers read, listen, and watch — to learn and to have fun? Where do they hang out and socialize online? Where do they get their news from? Which thought leaders and influencers do they look up to?

Now, at first glance this might not seem like useful information. Who cares if your customers still aren’t over the Game of Thrones finale, or which celebrities they follow? What can you actually do with these insights?

Well… quite a lot! For example:

  • Having shared pop culture “touchstones” with your target audience can help your messaging and marketing. You’ll always know which references, jokes, memes, stories, analogies etc. will go right over your customers’ heads… and which will hit ‘em juuust right!
  • Knowing what your audience consumes and where they hang out will make your marketing campaigns a lot more precise. And I don’t just mean PPC ads, but also sponsorships, joint ventures, content marketing, and basically any other strategy — paid or organic!
  • Speaking of joint ventures… If you know who already has your customers’ attention, you can pitch these people and companies on business partnerships and collaborations. That way, you’ll capture some of their influence and gain access to their audiences! And I’m not talking about signing brand deals with big-name celebrities (but hey, if you can pull it off — more power to you!), mind you. I just mean approaching multiple smaller but highly targeted thought leaders — other entrepreneurs, experts, content creators etc.

See how useful knowing your customers’ tastes can be? *wink* So if you don’t already know what influences them… find out!

 

Do you know your customers well enough to get their attention… in 30 seconds or less?

 

I know what you’re thinking, “There’s no way I can hook people on my business in 30 seconds!” I disagree. My team has already helped dozens of businesses formulate an irresistible Elevator Pitch — and we want to create one for you, too.

An Elevator Pitch is designed to cut through all the distractions and grab your prospects’ attention as fast as possible. It’s a single, memorable statement about your business that you can deliver in 30 seconds or less. And it has ONE job — getting potential customers excited enough and curious enough to say the 3 all-important words…

“Tell me more!”

All you need is to hop on a 30-minute consultation with one of our expert copywriters here at The Draw Shop. They will help you define the problem you solve, how you solve it, and the life-changing results your customers will see from working with you.

Then we’ll transform your input into a unique Elevator Pitch for your brand — a powerful 30-second statement scientifically designed to stand out, delight, persuade… and convert.

And we’ll top it off with a one-page, one-of-a-king infographic that makes your pitch into an engaging visual story! That’s going to be a valuable marketing asset in its own right — you can use it to…

  • Share it with your team
  • Feature it on your website
  • Use it in your email signature
  • Put it on the back of your business card
  • Spread it on social media

And more!

Interested?

Visit this page to book your appointment, and create your Elevator Pitch + infographic!