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As a business owner, every cent counts. Especially when you’re starting out, you want to make sure each spend is as effective as possible, producing maximum return for your company – whether that’s actual financial return, or simply customer satisfaction and loyalty.
A key part of business success and growth is pinning down what your customers want, so you can anticipate their needs and provide them with products and services that match. In this post, we outline why taking the time to truly understand your customers is worth the effort.
You can focus your spending on your core objectives
When you start your business, you’ll have established what your core objectives are. Ultimately, businesses rely on customers to make money, and therefore your aims will likely be based on meeting a certain customer need, or improving customer satisfaction.
Truly understanding your customers means that you won’t need to guess where to spend your cash. Instead, you can invest in targeted strategies that help you meet your goals faster. Plus, when you’re armed with data and evidence, it’s easier to stay focused, and keep spending in line with what is right for your business, rather than being swayed by trends or
competitors.
Create products that will sell
There’s always an initial investment required when it comes to product companies. You have to put some money upfront to create prototypes, source materials and eventually make the final items, all without any sales returns. This can be a nerve-wracking time, and the process is repeated every time you add a new product.
By understanding your ideal customer, you can make sure that every part of the product is right for them. By doing so, you naturally increase the chances of making a sale when you go to market, speeding up the process of getting cash back into the bank. In comparison, without conducting proper market research, you could waste money on a product that doesn’t sell, leaving you back at square one – with less money than you started with.
Reduce your marketing spend
Would you customer primarily find your business on Instagram? TikTok? Via Google ads? Through posters? If you don’t know the answer, you have to target all of them, with a scattergun approach that brings mixed results. Plus, you’ll likely have to shell out for either a marketing specialist or use up your own time to create content, create a strategy and actually manage all of these streams.
When you know where your core customers are, you can keep spending small at first and simply target these platforms. As you grow, you may need to branch out, but for now, focus on delivering to the people who are most likely to buy your products.
The importance of information
Even when you’re established as a business, continuing to gather and maintain data via a single customer view is key. By regularly checking in to see if your company strategy is in line with your customers, you’re giving your business the best chance of success.
