How to make sure you meet your client where they’re at.
Marketing efforts fail for two reasons: they either offer a product no one will buy, or their message fails to connect with their audience. No amount of good marketing will save a bad business strategy, but there’s plenty that good marketing can do to send the right message. The key to addressing your customer’s need is to step back and put yourself in your customer’s shoes.
Assume nothing.
Most companies struggle to look at themselves from their customer’s perspective. They assume they know what their clients know, what their clients want, and what their clients need. As a result, they often find themselves struggling with messaging that fails to connect, and they don’t understand why.
In order to break your assumptions, start by reexamining what you think you know about your client. Does your messaging use a lot of insider language that your clients aren’t likely to understand? Are you pushing a product or a service that is out of demand? Or are you failing to offer something your clients need? Are you on social media, and if so, are you listening to what your clients are saying? They could be giving you some crucial feedback that you can incorporate to make a more targeted campaign.
Send the right message to the right people
Not everyone needs to hear the same thing. Maybe your industry offers one product to a client, and another product to a partner. Or maybe you have one service for residential customers, and another for commercial use. The important thing is to be aware of your audience and speak to their need: you will make a deeper connection with a specific message targeted toward a small group than a generic message meant for anyone and everyone.
Are you speaking to new acquaintances or old friends?
A large part of this lies in understanding where your customer stands in their relationship with you. A completely new client or prospective client may not even know who you are: they’re still scoping out the market. By contrast, a return customer will expect a more personal connection. You want them know you remember them and value their business.
At the end of the day, addressing your customer’s need is the result of keeping mind who you’re talking to and what they’re interested in hearing. It may mean you have to focus less on what you want to say and more on what they want to hear, but the result will be a better client relationship.
