It’s never easy to please everybody because dividual differences play a huge role in people’s perceptions and actions. Instead of wasting your time trying to satisfy everybody, it’s best to concentrate on the few who you can satisfy. This applies to businesses and their customers. If you don’t know who to target or pursue, you may end up losing out in the competitive business environment. That’s why you must think of how to find the right customer for your business even in the early stages of planning.
Finding the right customer or clients is one milestone to conquer as a businessman.
You can’t win in the entrepreneurial race without finding the right customer to attract and serve.
Many people have ignored the importance of identifying their right clients and instead waste money on marketing without focus.
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But you can do things differently from today after reading this article.
We have every information you need to find the ideal clients for your business.
Instead of serving everyone, you can focus your marketing efforts on those customers who need your products or services.
That’s your ticket to unprecedented business growth.
Let’s go!
How to find out who your customers are?
There are many ways to find out who you should be serving.
You can’t succeed in business without customers.
But the customers that matter most are those who need your services or products.
That’s why we recommend that you find your customers are before planning your marketing campaign.
It doesn’t matter the medium you’re selling through, offline or online; you need to know the end-users.
So, what are the things you must do to know who should be serving?
1. Become a niche
There are many niches out there differentiating the products and services of millions of businesses.
You can’t do everything, and you can’t be all things to everybody.
So, niche down your business to ensure a better focus and target.
Instead of creating all kinds of products you see, why not try to concentrate on one product.
You can start by refining your product and become a specialist in it.
Even though other people offer similar products or services, try hard to tweak yours to target a specific need.
That way, you have become a unique niche and can quickly identify who your ideal clients are.
Also, refining your products or services will help you to know your unique selling point.
Once you’ve known what you have that others don’t, you can now narrow down your search.
2. Market research
Any business that ignores the need for market research will operate blindly.
No matter how much you know about your product or service, you need to find the right customer who’ll get value from it.
Also, research will reveal if people need your product or if you’re creating a nonexistent demand in your head.
We know that carrying out in-depth research is not easy.
But for your business to grow, you need to find the right customer.
Therefore, you can start the journey from the people around you.
Ask your friends and family what they think about your product or service.
They may not personally need it, but they are part of a broader community as well.
So, they can tell you if your solutions matter or not.
One thing about your family and friends is that they’ll let you know the truth no matter how painful it is to you.
The second source to explore is the internet.
There’s nothing you can’t find on google, and if there is, we know it’s little.
So, hit the world wide web and research your niche or a similar niche.
Check other businesses that are offering related products or services to know their customers/clients.
Find out who they’re targeting in their marketing campaigns and check the people who are patronizing them.
When you get this information, it’ll point you in the right direction in finding your ideal clients.
One of the things that’ll also help you is to analyze your business.
Look into the solutions you want to offer to the clients/customers, and from there, you can know the particular people who need it.
3. Testing the impact of your business
Before the final launch of a product or service, it’s right to test run it for impact.
Many businesses don’t know this, and those who know don’t seem to attach importance to it.
Do you know that if you test run your offer on potential customers or clients, you’ll discover lots of things?
For instance, if you’re planning to open a restaurant and decide to test run your foods on potential customers, you’ll discover if you’re a good or bad cook.
All you need to do is prepare a little of the foods in your proposed menu and serve a few individuals.
Ask them to give you honest feedback on the foods.
Many big restaurants don’t introduce a new offer without first test running it on a few of their customers.
So, why not do the same to discover the people who’ll enjoy your products and those you will not.
That way, you can identify and find the right customer to serve.
Moreover, this step is very helpful.
After testing the product on some customers, you may get ideas on how to improve your solutions to suit your ideal clients better.
Let’s say you want to make children-friendly snacks and decide to test it on some kids.
During the testing, you discover that the snacks were too spicy for them; what has that shown you?
That you must reduce the quantity of your spices since your customers are mostly kids.
So, testing your products will also help you to improve.
4. Define your ideal client
You must know by now that you can’t serve everybody so, try hard to know the people that need what you have to offer.
After niching down your business and researching your competitors, it’s time to define your customers/clients.
Your ideal clients are those people you’ve discovered that needs your solution.
For instance, if you’re producing diapers for adults, you should know already that your products are better suited for senior citizens.
But not all senior citizens need diapers.
The people who need to wear diapers are older men and women who can’t help themselves anymore.
For instance, any man suffering from prostrate will need to wear an adult diaper if he doesn’t have the strength for frequent visits to the restroom.
After identifying your ideal client, it’s time to create the right customer profile.
This profile is easy, and you can do it by gathering the basic information about your ideal customer.
Start by writing down some details, such as their age, financial status, social standing, work type, cultural interests, etc.
If you succeed in creating your ideal client profile, you have also identified your target market.
By identifying your target market like this, you can easily focus your marketing campaign in the right direction.
5. Identify the clients you should avoid
You may be thinking that we’re not serious about this, but we are.
As you spend time finding your ideal client and creating a profile for the right customer, you must also know how to identify a time killer.
Some may say that you should first determine the customers you don’t want anywhere near your business.
But we say, identify the right ones and from them, identify the ones to avoid by all means.
So, how can you pinpoint those clients who may end up wasting your time?
- They make unrealistic demands.
- You spend too much time trying to convince them of everything.
- They’re quick to dismiss your efforts.
- They ask for discounts, even without using your solutions at all.
Finding your potential customer
Now that you know who to be targeting for your business, we want to go further to find your potential customers.
The customer finding process is not cut and dry.
You may need to employ more than one strategy to get them interested in your business.
You already know who your customers are supposed to be, but how do you find them for your business?
1. Discover the biggest desire of your ideal client
That ideal client you aim to satisfy has something that they need more than anything in the world.
What is their ultimate desire, and do you think you can help them achieve it?
Also, what’s the perfect way to help them achieve their ultimate goal?
If you can get the correct answer to these questions, you’ve got a potential customer for your business.
2. Discover the biggest pain of your ideal client
Everybody has their desires and also their pains.
After discovering what your ideal customers desire most, you need to find out the things that ail them too.
Once you have found what is keeping them awake at night, try to envisage how your offer can solve the pain for them.
If you see that your solution can help them overcome the pain, you’ve identified your potential customer.
If you don’t know how to find the pain points, start by finding out what worries them the most.
Also, try to discover that problem that they will give anything to solve any day.
3. Try to be their kind
Every person on earth has particular kinds of things they like or admire.
Even as you’re busy identifying, locating, and attracting your ideal clients, they’re also searching for their ideal service/product provider.
Getting potential customers for your business relies on whether they see you as the kind of brand or company they need.
So what are you going to do to be that ideal brand for your customers?
You can start by repositioning your business to identify with your ideal customers.
First, you need to change your marketing message to resonate with them.
For instance, if you’re ideal clients are the youths, you should know already that they need a lively brand who understands the time they’re in.
You can’t use a dull and dry marketing campaign to attract the youths of nowadays.
If you do, they’ll dismiss you as suitable for the senior citizens.
4. Understand what they value
If you’re looking for the best way to find new customers, you need to understand what your ideal client values.
That way, you can easily identify the business model that matches the clients’ values.
One reason to find out what your customer value is because everybody is different.
You may be surprised that customers of one particular niche may have different things they value.
Some people may value lower prices while others may value quick service rendition.
Others may prefer a dedicated service from your business what others may want something else.
It is hard sometimes to know the particular thing that your customers like.
When you have a database of clients who don’t know what they value, you may feel the weight of the world on your shoulders.
But don’t worry; there’re methods to identify what your clients value the most.
The most effective method of discovering what’s important to your customers is data analytics.
There are many ways to gather data on your customers.
All you need is to discover their search activities, buying habits, and preferences.
With Google Analytics, you can get this done and learn how your customers react to changes, no matter how subtle.
You’ll get to discover those who buy when the price is lowest and those who go for a specific offer or those who react positively to quick service.
One good thing about data analytics is that it can help you to know the areas you can improve to serve your customers better.
You should know that change is a constant thing, and as such, your ‘right customer today may not be the same in years to come.
But with data analytics, you can position your business to meet the customer changing needs.
Best way to get clients
Every business aims at getting the ideal clients to serve.
But you need to bring them in to serve them.
So, what are the things you can do to get clients for your business?
1. Position your business where they are
After identifying who your right customer is, the next thing is to find him/her.
After finding them, you must now get them for your business to grow.
Or else, all your efforts are worthless.
If you hide away in an office while your ideal clients are online, they can’t find you easily.
If you also create a website while your customers are frequenting the social media platforms, you’re not doing well.
So, the best way to get clients is to be present where they are all the time.
Have you noticed that big companies, even smart SMEs, always pop up on multiple platforms online?
Apart from online platforms, why do you think a business enterprise spends money opening up branches everywhere?
The answer is that they want to be where their customers can locate them quickly.
So, if you want to get the clients who’ll patronize your business, establish your brand where they are, whether online or offline.
If you have a website, that’s great! But you can still create accounts on social media platforms where your customers visit all the time.
Don’t worry about knowing where they go because data analytics will reveal such information to you.
That’s another reason to analyze your customers’ activities online.
2. Invest in a good business model
One of the things that’ll help you to get clients is to give them what they value.
That’s why we said earlier that you should know what your customer’s value in a service or about a product.
If you have customers who have various things they expect, you can follow a business model that’ll give room to meet these expectations.
Sometimes many companies try to combine more than one business model to ensure that their customers get what they expect.
So, it all depends on your resources and how you manage them.
For instance, if your ideal clients value low prices more than anything else, what can you do for them?
Organize your business in such a way that they can get access to units with lower prices.
Secondly, if your customers prefer products or services that suit their local tastes, you can give your local managers the power to customize your solutions to suit their environment.
Also, some customers value global-level excellence more than anything.
If you want to get those kinds of clients, you need to organize your resources to support your global business units.
We know that companies who often use this kind of business model are big shots like Microsoft, Apple, etc.
If you have the resources to do what they’re doing, why not?
You can get every kind of customer you want at all levels.
3. Invest in marketing
Marketing is simply the activities involved in placing your product or service in the hands of your ideal clients or customers.
It involves all those promotional activities that you invest in to induce interest in your product.
After identifying your ideal clients, we expect that you must engage in marketing to get them.
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There are many ways to market your products and to find the right customer.
A simple word of mouth can kick-start your journey to getting clients.
If you’re running a small business, it’s best to start with friends and family and encourage them to share the word with their friends too.
Another way which has taken over the marketing activities is digital marketing.
There’re many tools you can leverage to succeed in digital marketing.
A few of the simplest ones include website contents, blogs, emails, ads, etc.
There are lots of tools and strategies you can employ to spread the word about your business.
Many big companies usually run ads on different platforms to get clients worldwide.
This is why you must also run ads on many platforms to reach those you identified earlier.
Remember, we emphasized that identifying the right customer will help you to design your marketing campaign appropriately.
Now, the time has come to do that.
There are many platforms where you can run ad campaigns, such as Google and Facebook.
You can use one of them, or you can use both to advertise your product or service.
The good thing is that these platforms can accommodate your budget, no matter how small.
But when it comes to simplicity, we recommend Facebook ads if you’re still starting.
As you get more knowledge of leveraging them, you can graduate to running Google ads.
Also, another popular marketing method that many businesses are using is affiliate marketing.
If you think you have what it takes to appear before millions of people, create an affiliate program for your business.
Once you’ve done that, watch your business grow as your affiliate partners work to attract customers to your products and services for a commission.
The only thing is that you must create an attractive offer depending on your capacity, of course.
Apart from affiliates, some big shots also create referral programs where people refer and earn commission too.
So, you can choose the best method for your business.
With targeted marketing activities, you can get as many clients as you want for your business.
The problem with most people is that they ignore marketing.
Some businesses have existed for many years but have remained stagnant.
It is either that no one knows them, or they are satisfied with the level of growth they have been able to attain.
So, it all depends on your business goals and objectives, plus your plans.
Final Words
Customer finding is never easy unless you know what to do.
But no matter how hard you perceive it to be, we want you to know that it’s a prerequisite to business growth.
Many big shots in your industry started with it, and you, too, can do the same.
If you have been asking about how to find the right customer, use the ideas in this article.
We also shared some practical things you can do to get clients and how to identify your potential clients.
If you don’t want to end up serving anyone in your business, spend time identifying your ideal clients.
No business can serve every kind of client.
Identify those who need what you have and achieve your goals faster.
