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September 6, 2023 By Pat Meehan

Identifying Your Ideal Customer

Welcome to Identifying Your Ideal Customer – Part 6 of our series on The Power of Strategic Planning.

Introduction:

A significant portion of your strategic plan will be focused on marketing, pinpointing your ideal customer, and comprehending their pain points.  In part 6 of this series, we will delve into the art of identifying your ideal customer and gaining a deep understanding of their pain points, both of which are essential for crafting compelling marketing messages.  With the number of ads American’s are exposed to each day (between 6,000 and 10,000) it only makes sense to make sure this part of your plan is rock solid.

Step 1: Defining Your Ideal Customer

The foundation of any effective marketing campaign is a crystal-clear definition of your ideal customer. This involves creating detailed buyer personas or profiles that represent the individuals you are targeting. Consider these key elements when defining your ideal customer:

  1. Demographics: Start with the basics, such as age, gender, location, and income. These fundamental characteristics serve as your starting point.
  2. Psychographics: Delve into their lifestyle, values, interests, and behaviors. What drives them? What are their hobbies? What are their core values and motivations?

Step 2: Research Your Audience

To build accurate and meaningful buyer personas, you must conduct thorough research. Here are some valuable research methods to consider:

  1. Surveys and Questionnaires: Gather insights directly from your existing customers or prospective audience through surveys and questionnaires.  This is also a great way to build out your marketing list to be used during the launch of your marketing campaign.  We will discuss this in Part 7 of this series.
  2. Social Media Listening: Monitor social media platforms to discern the topics and issues that resonate with your potential customers.  The best way to get exposed to your potential customers is to engage with them on social media sites of competitors or industry influencers.  By being active on feeds that already have large numbers of followers you can really discern the problems this audience needs solutions to and craft a solution that will give them what they are looking for.
  3. Competitor Analysis: Study your competitors to gain insights into their customer base and discover any unmet needs or underserved pain points.  Read the reviews and look for opportunities to do it better.

Step 3: Understanding Your Ideal Customers Pain Points

Understanding the pain points of your ideal customer is paramount in creating a marketing strategy that truly connects. What is the problem they currently have that they need solutions for? Here’s how to gain insight into their challenges:

  1. Surveys and Interviews: Conduct surveys or one-on-one interviews to probe deeper into the specific problems or challenges your ideal customers encounter in their lives or work.  LinkedIn and other social media platforms allow direct polling that can be very helpful when testing potential solutions to a problem.
  2. Customer Feedback: Pay close attention to feedback from your current customers and that of your competitors. What issues or concerns do they frequently raise?
  3. Online Forums and Communities: Explore relevant online forums and communities where your target audience congregates. Analyze discussions and comments to uncover recurring pain points.  Alignable is the perfect place to ask direct questions of a target audience or listen to the questions asked by others.  Local Mom groups and community forums like Next Door often provide great feedback on what people are having issues with or need solutions too.
  4. Keyword Research: Use keyword research tools like Spyfu or Google to identify the most common search queries related to your industry or niche. These queries often reflect the pain points people are seeking solutions for.

Conclusion:

Identifying your ideal customer and gaining insight into their pain points form the bedrock of a successful marketing strategy which we will cover in more detail in part 7 of this series. When you deeply understand the challenges and issues that your target audience faces, you can tailor your offerings and marketing messaging to offer genuine solutions that resonate with them. This understanding is a dynamic process that evolves as your audience’s needs change, making it an ongoing effort that is well worth the investment. Stop just endlessly posting and engage with your social media audience, you might just uncover the answers you have been looking for.  Ultimately, by empathizing with your ideal customers and addressing their pain points, you pave the way for stronger engagement, brand loyalty, and business growth.  For help with your business roadmap reach out any time at TEC Resource Center or build your own roadmap with our newly launch Business Roadmap software.  Until next time we wish you much success in whatever path you choose.

 

Filed Under: Executive Coaching Tagged With: Alignement, Ideal Customer, Messaging, Planning, Strategy

November 22, 2022 By Pat Meehan

Leveraging Your Existing Customer Relationships

Strategic Planning

 

Your existing customers offer you the quickest and least expensive way to grow your company.  As we have covered in past articles one of the five focus areas for every business is the number of transactions you can achieve with each of your clients.  We all know how hard and expensive it is to attract a new lead and then convert them to a loyal and trusting customer.  It would be a mistake not to make the most out of your hard-earned relationship.  Today we will explore a few strategies to increase the number of transactions you do with your customers each year.

Cross Selling

We see this effectively used every time we go to a fast-food restaurant.  You order a burger and a soda, and you are instantly asked if you want fries with that.  A more subtle example is the store owner who places candy by the checkout register knowing well that Mom and Dad will succumb to the desires of the kids.  Shopify actually calls their upsell and cross sell option the candy rack.  As soon as you click the add to cart button, offers are displayed in the form of a pop-up, upselling and cross selling to the customer before they leave the site.  This is a proven strategy for increasing the number of transactions a customer will make during and after their initial purchase.

So, let’s say you are a hair salon and you have contracted with some hair product companies to display their products in your shop.  Most owners do this.  The question is will anyone ask the customer if they would like to purchase this product during their visit?  If you don’t ask, they will not buy.  If you do, it turns out that 34% of the time they will purchase an additional or alternative (more expensive) product at the time of purchase if they are asked.  Better still, open an on-line store that allows that customer to acquire the products they need to keep their hair style looking good between visits.  This store might just produce more revenue and definitely profit for the business than the shop itself!  By the way while shopping they will be reminded that it is time to book their next appointment.

Business Alliances

In the case of the hair salon, the distributor of the hair products sold in the shop is a good example of a business alliance partner.  An arrangement or contract between two parties to share in the revenue sold by the other party.  This is straight forward when it comes to distribution arrangements but what about other alliances.

Take the landscaping company who forms a relationship with an outdoor light company to help accent the beautiful plantings they install.  They don’t have the expertise to install the lighting so they find a company of similar quality that they can form a partnership with and share in the revenue added to the original project.  Think about your business.  Is there a product or service that your customer might buy from you that adds to the value of what you bring the client?

The painter who added window coverings (blinds, shades, curtains…) to his everyday offering increased the revenue of his company by 60% without spending a single cent on marketing.  They simply added this service as part of their normal quoting process.  The window covering vendor was thrilled to have met the painter and has since added many painters to his list of partners.

By the way, the profit of the painting job was increase exponentially because the painter added nothing in cost and a significant amount in revenue by forming the alliance.

Bolt-on Business

As a company grows it may make sense to add synergistic service units to the business.  I will often recommend a franchise business to an owner as an easy way to bolt-on additional revenue opportunities with very little up-front cost.

Take the case of the property manager who is responsible for renting and maintaining the properties for his customers.  They manage everything from the cleaning of the properties to the renovations to keep things looking new and fresh.  As a new business owner, it doesn’t make sense to do anything but find properties they can manage for a fee.  But as the business grows there is an opportunity to add multiple revenue streams by bolting on small low-cost franchises that will perform the cleaning, or painting or renovation work.  Obviously, the owner could go out and buy an existing business or start his own division in any of these categories but then he/she would have to learn the process of managing all these different operations.  With a franchise they come with the training, policies, and know how to run each business all for the low price of a franchise fee (normally between $10,000 and $50,000).

Often this strategy is proceeded by business alliances like those discussed above.  In this case it may be more appropriate to form a partnership or even an agreement to merge the two companies.  As a business owner you should never feel as if you are too small to think about these types of arrangements. I have seen many a large company formed by the merger of many smaller ones.  One word of caution when merging or joining organizations.  Culture is a very significant part of any company and if both parties don’t share the same philosophies when it comes to how things are done it can be disastrous for everyone involved.

Conclusion

As a business owner you know that there is nothing more important than protecting and nurturing the relationship you have with your customers.  There is no better way to do this than to have multiple touchpoints with that customer.  Leveraging those relationships by giving them multiple ways and multiple opportunities to do business with you is a win-win for both you and the customer.  They get to buy a service they need from someone they already trust, and you get to strengthen your bond with them by once again servicing them well.  Call me and we can brainstorm ways for you to leverage your relationship with your

Filed Under: Increased Revenue, Performance, Strategic Planning Tagged With: Messaging, performance, Planning, Strategy

September 8, 2022 By Pat Meehan

Attention – Make It Pop!

 

 

 

There are 5 major components to good advertising copy (The order of these is essential to success):
Command Attention
Showcase Benefits of Products/Services
Prove the Benefits
Persuade People to Embrace the Benefits
Call to Action
Advertising is sales in print. So, you need to think about the unique benefits your products/services offer and showcase that in a persuasive way. You need to emphasize results, not features.
Let’s take a minute to talk about each of these components:
Command Attention: This is usually accomplished with the headline. You need an attention-getter that makes people want to know more about your products/services. The best headlines give a vivid portrayal of the benefits or show how a problem can be avoided with your products/services. The headline is the advertisement for the advertisement.
Showcase Benefits: You must showcase the benefits of your products and services and, more importantly, show how they will solve or prevent a problem. They need to know what’s in it for them. Include useful, factual, and clear information to show precisely what the benefits are and how they are going to help the customer.
Offer Proof: This is where you prove what the advertisement is offering. You need to establish you have a method to deliver. Consider information that establishes credibility and past performance.
Persuade: You need to add compelling reasons for your potential customers to purchase your products/services. Use a hard sell approach and create scarcity. This will enact your potential customers to feel like they have to act now. Which leads into the last component.
Call to Action: You need to compel your potential customers to DO something. They need to check out your site, sign up for your newsletter, purchase your products, contact you about services…something.  Offer a freebie, booklet, sample, product, bonus, demo, consult, limited time price…the list goes on. There are lots of ways to get potential customers excited about ordering and help them feel like they are getting an amazing deal.
Good advertisements include all these components and are not complete without any of them. You can sit down and think through any one of these components, then figure out how to best place them together for the most effectiveness. We can help you with this too. Try our FREE test drive to learn how to put together great advertisements from some of the best in the business – teccoaching.com.

 

 

Filed Under: Marketing, Strategic Planning Tagged With: Advertising, Marketing, Messaging

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