Who are your customers?
No, it’s not everyone on this earth. Would you refer everyone on this earth to your business? Didn’t think so. If you are a serious business person (I’m pretty sure you are if you are reading this post), it’s critical to drill down and answer the question “who are your customers?”
We talked about asking questions last week. Let’s be creative and push this further by asking your viewers, fans or followers “What’s your favourite TV show?“. Pretty generic isn’t it? this won’t work…not specific enough.
Let’s say you are a general contractor, you could ask “what home improvement shows do you like watching?” The answers might give you some insight on the “type” of shows they like to watch. Did you notice that I didn’t ask what home improvement shows they liked watching on tv? this might result in an answer like “I don’t have a tv“. By leaving the question open to “just watching”, this covers people who watch their shows online. Sounds picky doesn’t it? We have to be, because we are looking for a specific type of conversation.
Are they watching:
- how to renovate homes to make money? such as “Income Property” or “Property Brothers“
- DIY home improvement shows? such as “Fixer Upper” or “Leave it to Bryan“
- shows about a specific topic? such as “Disaster Decks” or “Timber Kings“
This might help you “talk” with your fans and provide them with useful content. If the majority of your fans love “Disaster Decks“, as a general contractor, you could offer some helpful tips specifically related to decks.
After posting a few tips, post a picture or status update with a link to your blog containing a full post on a recent deck build you completed. Include before and after pictures and a testimonial from the client. Don’t forget to allow comments on your blog to further engage with your fans and potential customers.
If you were a real estate agent, a builder or a carpenter, you could benefit from asking these types of questions too.
What’s one question you could ask your viewers, fans or followers right now? feel like sharing it with us? post it below.
If you’re having some trouble crafting a question, share what you do below and we’ll come up with something together. Not a public sharing type of person, contact me privately and we’ll come up with something together in a free 30-minute consultation.
Until next time, Stay Inspired!
Gisèle
This is fun! I have already asked mine what their favourite TV programme was and the answer was very varied…. I could ask them their favourite movie or book…
yes, the more specific the better.
I have asked women in my target group what is a leadership challenge that keeps them up at night. Some of the responses confirmed what I had identified and others gave me new ideas to consider. I am slowly becoming more clear on who is “my audience of one.” It’s a little scary and it does help focus who I am trying to reach.
It takes a bit of time to really find out who your customer is, but allow the “ideal” customer to change as times change. New business start ups may have an idea, but once you’re into the grove of talking with people (on and offline), a pattern seems to emerge of who you “click” with and have the same ideas or interests that you do.
I haven’t tried this yet, Gisele. I am curious, though! I could ask my group what kinds of photography they enjoy. (I teach women about photography.) That could tell me what kind of articles and products they’d be interested in.
Hi Erika!
If you teach women about photography (without knowing if it’s consumers or businesses or what is included in your photography course) you could ask them what type of pictures they would like to take for gift giving. That could open up some more ideas. I’m thinking of my inner circle and every single woman loves to take pictures, dolly them up in Photoshop or another editor and pop them in a pretty frame. You could tips on photo editing or framing.
Knowing what specific interests etc a potential customer has definitely helps you learn about the type of person they are and also their specific needs and desires. You then can provide them with information and the help they are looking for. They are more willing to work with you if you can pinpoint their needs and have the knowledge to provide them with the solutions so to speak they are looking for.
Sometimes to throw people in a bit of a tizzy, I’ll take some research I did and on a first meet with a client, I’ll ask them something totally unrelated which tells me about them as a person. Helps break the ice.
Every now and then I’ve asked about favorite type of jewelry, length, style, also are you interested in fashion, entertainment, etc. I get varied results based on who sees my post. So I continue to post varied information that informs, entertains, inspires and occasional product. I know my fans would luke to see more of us, behind the scenes, etc. Thinking of interesting ways to provide this.
Before breakfast, Joe and I sit outside with Mia and have our mini meeting. This morning it was ways to bring ideas to people to combat the overseas “manufactured” stuff vs “quality hand-crafted” goods.
So for you specifically, what about a behind the scenes YouTube clip and feature how much work goes into a design or a design in progress? maybe a montage of tiny segments put together from start to finish, small clips of each step. Keep it short though. Do a direct upload to Facebook and if you have a YouTube channel, do a direct upload there. Speaking from experience with the right brain business I also have, people LOVE to see things the time and effort being put into hand-crafted goods.
You may have to do a few and then see what people say and there you go. I’m willing to bet that you will get some asking if you have a course or book to teach people how to make jewelry.
Great tip, Gisele!
People love to answer short, easy questions and to see what everyone else answers as well. It’s a great engagement tactic for social media, but as you point out, it allows you to REALLY know your ideal clients!
When asking specific questions, the answers open up opportunities to create more content for your blog, social media and tap into an opportunity to create a product or service that you’re not offering.
Love the idea of being specific and engaging people in a conversation that is relevant to them. As a writer who writes about a wide range of lifestyle topics, I am curious what question I would ask readers. As I write more from inspiration and intuition and often find things that are part of the current cultural conversation that I am interested in and believe others would be too.
As I am always interested in writing for other people as well, my sense is it would be a specific topic that is their “pain point” and they could use some help with. I believe you would love the book The Art of Powerful Conversation by Stuart Knight. Much of what you share, Gisele, reminds me of his message as well. Thanks for stirring up the question machine in me today!
Writing from inspiration and intuition is a great way to do it. I admire you not just because you are a wonderful writer, but the way you approach a topic you are not familiar with (referring to “remembering our authentic swing”). I’ll have to lookup up that book, thanks for sharing that with me.
I ask my customers what they enjoy doing. I like to find out what they are interested in or passionate about.
can you share something “specific you would ask”?
You’ve hit on one of my pet peeves. I often ask people while out networking who they’d most like to be referred to them. Nine times out of ten they say ‘everyone.’ It’s great they believe in their business, but it doesn’t help me work out who I should refer to them. It brings no specifics up. Even if you do feel that everyone could do with what you’ve got there are some people more affordably reachable and some people more likely to buy. Surely we can all narrow it down a bit!
we have a new client that did this to Joe yesterday, he answered the question “who do you feel is your ideal customer” and the answer was “everyone”. Joe replied “so a 70 year old woman will order packaging from you” and the man laughed (he’s 70 as well). I was in tears laughing quietly listening to this conversation. The client said his eyes were truly opened, was very appreciative with our honesty 🙂
This is hard. But that’s good because it’s making me think. My target market is Christians who want to build a godly network marketing business. They want a healthier lifestyle that is in alignment with God, wanting to help others grow closer to God. Also desirous of more income and more time freedom. If already in network marketing, they aren’t sure what they’re doing is okay with God. Can you help me come up with my question?
Did you want me to share some ideas here or privately?
Asking the right questions will help tighten any sales process. Being specific will help provide time efficiency for you to cater to other things.
that’s right, you won’t want to waste time trying to sell to someone who will never buy from you.
I also want to personally thank you for writing that article about the Publix and Aldi hoax. Although it didn’t make you any money directly, you were sharing something very important with your audience and you got “trust and credibility” as your payment.
I really enjoy question posts – always great to get people thinking. I enjoyed your article very much. Thank you so much for connecting with me and helping me to learn. Have a great rest of your week.
thanks LeAnn!
If you market to everyone, you appeal to nobody. Great tactic for narrowing down who your ideal clients are and what they want.
with you’re target being women, you’ve narrowed things down automatically. On a side note, I really enjoyed the Telesummit yesterday. I wish I would have registered earlier.
Very good advice to remember to be specific, I usually change my questions around depending on my prospect or audience. Asking the right questions is a skill learned by asking all the wrong questions or no questions at all. Thank you for this great reminder! It’s so simple and it shows people that you care about what matters to them!
When changing your questions around depending on your prospect or audience keeps things fresh and shows you are listening.
Gisele, this is great advice. It reminds me of Alicia Dunams’ remark that “if you market for everybody, you won’t get anybody” to buy. Knowing your niche, and what they are buying, matters. Thank you for reiterating this. Way to go, Cupcake. 🙂
Ah, thanks Liz, or should I say Cupcake Master! 🙂
I just went to a presentation on how millennials think and therefore choose to buy. It made me think about how I need to start targeting different questions to different demographics for my husband’s mortgage company social media engagement. This article definitely helped to solidify it all…thanks!
You are very welcome Beth. Once we look at the world through the eyes of our audience, we tend to see things a little bit differently.
Terrific ways to get clear about your customer…
Start with short,easy to answer questions…and then move to the more difficult. Like what keeps you up at night!
That question is a good one, it gives you an opportunity to work on a solution for those problems. We have a couple of clients that would say that snoring keeps them up at night 🙂
I think I’m getting better at this one. I did used to say ‘everyone’ and quickly realized that just isn’t so.
Have you tried asking a specific question in the last couple of days ? 🙂
It is truly important to know who the customers are; otherwise, our marketing efforts are like shooting arrows in the dark.
Asking them directly is the best way but in instances where there is no one to ask around yet especially for start-ups. Research is one’s best ally.
Startups can also visit blogs and social media that would also serve their audience. They can get useful information there too.
Interesting Gisele and I still struggle with finding my ideal customer and target market… obviously they need to be social/tech savvy but not have the time to do the work and yet still value the need to be there… but there isn’t necessarily an age or gender for that as they are all over the place. Anyways.. interesting read
Gender, yes for your business it can be general, but age, I think is important when you are speaking to someone.
Yeah, the “on TV” would exclude me as I don’t watch TV. Great points. And I love the before-and-after concept; everyone wants to see those…which inspires them to do something similar.
Instead of TV, what about YouTube?
Great Post! Creating an engaging questions to further understand your audience/customer is not always an easy task, especially when your business is online where you can see your customer face to face.
I have a small popup poll that appears on the left hand corner of my website 30 seconds after a visitor lands on any page of my website.
But, I’m always stumped as to what type of question I should ask!
Since my site is about anti-aging skincare tips, I know most the majority of my visitors are women over 40……..
Any suggestions for a great, engaging question I could ask?
I went to your website and ok.. I have to admit, it resonated with me! I just turned 50 and a question that I would engage with would be along: How much time do you spend on your facial routine before bed? Or the same question framed “before work” or “in the morning”. Then you will get an idea if your audience are “rushing” people getting ready for work or casual people, possibly retired. From there, you could post specific anti-aging skincare tips for women who work. It’s all about time, so what tips could you offer to get the biggest benefit in the shortest amount of time even if it’s something that’s done just 2-3 times a week. Does this help?
Thanks Gisèle! What a great angle. I never thought about time constraints when it comes to anti-aging and beauty. Yet, the concept makes sense because these days I have little patience for lengthy skincare & makeup routines or facials.
Heck, even spending more than 30 minutes getting my hair cut is too long – in my opinion. There are other things I’d rather be doing, but I still want to look my best 🙂
Great post! I found it helpful and will begin to incorporate this into my social media strategy. Since I am in the social media field I could ask what frustrations do you have with social media marketing?
I asked that question and the common answer was the “haters on social media”. Next time, I need to break it down even more to be specific.
Well , i had asked about their favorite TV show. Loved to hear the variations about it as many of them were from different nationalities.