For all businesses, knowledge is power (indeed, the same can be said for many aspects of wider life too)...
Business intelligence is at the forefront of my own role in shaping Thrive's strategy and planning, but it is also an intrinsic part o the staff's approach too.
This blog focuses on those all important elements of a business - the customers! I'm going to look at why it's important to 'know your customers' when looking to attract and acquire them...
I think there are two areas where knowing your customers is critical - acquisition and retention (and, if you want to be pedantic, a third - advocacy). And, although often bundled together, there are subtle differences between them.
Attracting and acquiring customers ties into many of our blog posts and resources already featured on Thrive's site (a real font of knowledge and helpful resources). You have to make sure that you actually know who it is that you are trying to attract.
In quite a blasé fashion to clients, we used to say this in an all-knowing, "It's easy!" way.
That is until we decided to put ourselves through our own process. Then boy, did we learn! It wasn't easy, it was uncomfortable, challenging and we have to really, really think! And, I'm honest enough to admit, we didn't get it right the first time either!
We foolishly made assumptions that we knew who we wanted to attract and do business with and that we knew what it was that they wanted - we couldn't have been more wrong.
And so, our inbound adventure began - we have worked on this process, honing and refining it over the past few years and extending it to encompass our Buyer Personas workshop and Thriveability Plans. We now share what we've learned to make the process easier, less challenging and (dare we say it) fun for clients to work through.
Identifying who you actually want to do business with is an often skipped step we've found. So often companies assume that as they are making sales they just need to continue to do so without actually thinking about whether they are selling the right thing, to the right people.
As a starting point, these are things that you may want to give some consideration to - and then, if I may be so bold, I'd suggest that you browse our related ebooks and blog posts.
Before you embark on a full project (which we'd be happy to help you with) consider the questions below by putting yourself in your client's shoes.
- Personal demographics
- Educational background
- Career path
- Business industry, size of the company
- Job role, who reports to them, who they report to
- Success metrics of their day-to-day role
- The skills required in order to do their job
- Knowledge and tools that they utilise in their role
- Their key career and job-specific challenges and goals
- Success - what does it look like for them?
- The way they learn new 'stuff'
- Are they Instagrammers, Facebook-savvy, or do they still own a Nokia 3210 (a simpler time, might I add)?
- The ways they perform business research
- Their typical purchase process and how they choose a supplier/partner
The best way to analyse your customer base and identify the key traits and business objectives that will make a potential customer a 'perfect fit', is to engage us with a buyer personas workshop. find out more about our workshops offer here.
