Career
Koyona Duke: You Want Your Products to Get to Your Intended Customers? Then This is a MUST READ!
Reaching your customers is an ongoing process as a business owner. A key element or a valuable reach strategy is having a plan and being consistent in executing it. While results may not show up overnight, they do add up eventually. So go out and reach the right people.
No business owner has ever said “I don’t want to sell this product I spent hours of tears and investor money creating”. It is safe to assume that the dream of every business owner is to have a solution that sells out again and again. You want your designs, put out by paying customers, to go viral on social media,; you want your calendar booked out with paying gigs back to back. Seeing as we are already mid-year and this year hasn’t technically been one of the most productive for a lot of businesses, here are ways to help you go from crickets and empty bank accounts to achieving the sold-out status you crave.
Remember That Sales Never End
You are always trying to create clients, whether it’s content creation or building knowledgeable customers. Think about the best content creator you know online, what makes their product so amazing? Why do people want it? It’s simply the fact that they teach, entertain and involve their community in their activity. Selling is an ongoing concern.
Get The Product In Front Of The Customer
If a tree falls in the forest and there was no one there, did a tree fall? This is the same question you have to ask yourself as a business owner, do my customers even know I exist? A key part of getting the word is to run simple ads about your business, join communities, and make use of available tools including Whatsapp, Facebook, and Google. Mix up with the people that care about the need you are serving and take it from there.
Everyone Is Not Your Customer
A big mistake businesses make is to waste time on customers who will never spend money on your product or service because you don’t serve a need they have. A key way to help you stay away from this is to qualify your target audience first before investing effort in converting them. While there may be people who will buy or patronize your business outside of this target, you can’t dedicate effort to everyone with your limited resources, only the lowest hanging fruit. Pay attention to where your customers come from too. It’s not unheard of for businesses to make targeting errors, just be swift to fix them once you realize.
Close The Sale
Guide your customers through the steps you want them to take. For example, online subscriptions for your favorite music streaming application let you have a teaser – maybe a whole month or week of full premium access to all features. After the agreed-upon time, they tell you to make the choice now or let it go. If the customer has been using and enjoying all the benefits, why would they want to subscribe? The idea is to give them a taste and leave them wanting more (I can blame this method for at least 50% of all the subscriptions I currently have). You can use social media, an online store, and samplers to give your customer a taste and help you close more successfully. Keep testing closing methods to find out what works.
Boost Your Word of Mouth Game
Tell a friend to tell a friend to tell a friend. There are some businesses that run successfully on the power of word of mouth referrals. Do you have one? Is there a peck for the people who tell people about you? Have you remembered to tell someone to tell another person about you? If you haven’t, do it now. It’s simple survival.
Partnerships
These are such a powerful and sadly overlooked aspect of reaching your target audience. Think about the explosion of influencers and their rising power in sales and marketing. These people have whole communities built around the ‘likeability’ factor. This is why brands find influencers that have audiences that serve their markets and simply build strategic alliances (partnerships) with them. The same thing goes with celebrity brand ambassadorships. They want people to attribute that celebrity love and lifestyle to their brands. Partnerships can also be B2B (business to business) where you look for businesses that have complementary products that serve your market and you partner up them for a win/win strategy.
Reaching your customers is an ongoing process as a business owner. A key element or a valuable reach strategy is having a plan and being consistent in executing it. While results may not show up overnight, they do add up eventually. So go out and reach the right people.
Happy hunting.
