Don't just sell a product. Offer what your consumer really wants.
Great advice! But how do you know what your consumer wants? Is it a special kind of science or do we all need to be psychics?
No, not at all!
Actually, learning what your consumer wants is not that hard. By the end of this post, you'll be ready to get on with it.
Who is your ideal client?
Your first step into understanding your customer is finding out who they are. And not just any customer that may spend money with you on a random occasion. You want to know and truly understand your ideal client.
Start by painting a portrait of the person who you think you want to sell your product or service to the most.
It is a man or a woman? Maybe both? Maybe different gender?
How old is your ideal client? In their 20s, 30s, 40s or older? But get this, if you sell items or services for children, it doesn't mean your ideal client is a child. It's an adult, who has a child of a certain age.
What do they do for a living? Legal worker? City banker? Stay-at-home parent?
What do these people like? How do they spend their time? What is their life like? Good news is, you can find the answers to most of these questions on Google. You can read a lot of research papers or general statistics and draw the analysis.
You can take it a step further, and ask the questions directly to these people if you know where to find them. Maybe they are in a Facebook group, maybe they hang out more on LinkedIn. Perhaps they aren't on any social media at all, but you could find them at busy central locations in the city, in community centres, in schools.
Once you know who exactly is your ideal client you get a much clearer picture what they might need and want in their life.
What problem are you solving?
Seamlessly, we are moving to the next step of finding out what your consumer wants. If you know your ideal client well, you know their problems too. Now it's time to see how does your product or service solve that problem.
Discovering the pain points of your target market is crucial for the success of your marketing campaign. Nobody buys things just because you have them. They only get interested if you manage to convince them they actually need what you have in store. People relate to brands and businesses who understand them, who relate with them and make them feel close.
You don't need to be a mind reader, but you must sound like one. Give answers before your consumer asks the questions.
What does your client's client want?
When it comes to B2B models, the game gets one level more complicated. Now you don't just care about what your ideal client wants. To be successful, you need to know what your client's client wants and needs!
The research that you do will cover two fronts. You must start with the problems and needs of the end consumer. And that's not your client. It's their client.
Then, you can move on to finding out what your ideal client's goals are and how does your product or service can help accomplish them.
When pitching to another business as your client, always present the solutions they could provide to their client if they choose to buy from you. It shows great dedication and indept understanding of the market. It's hard to say "no" to someone who seems to know everything about you and the people you care about.
Ask your consumer not what they want to have, but what they wish they had
Might sound a bit confusing, but here's what I really mean. When doing your primary research you can get misleading results if you ask people directly what they want or need. Some people don't even know the answers to these questions. But they can always tell you what they wish they had.
Success is achieved through innovation. Successful products and services always fill a gap in the market. They don't offer something that's already there. Ideas for innovations are born from feedback on dreams and unrealistic expectations.
Someone once said: "I wish I could send emails on my phone." Most people must have laughed and brushed it aside.
But there he was, Steve Jobs... Bringing something to the world that others thought was impossible. The rest is history.
What does your consumer want? Get to know them, sell smart, not hard!
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