How to find your customers online (10 easy steps to start your search)
Welcome to my first ever blog post. I'm happy my journalism-studies weren't a total waste of my time and my parents' money after all. With this blog post, I want to help you gain customers online. Not just any customer, but your ideal customer.
The first part of the article will help you understand your target audience better and why they value your service or product over others. In the second part, I will guide you on finding the right matches to what you are offering in this crazy digital jungle we live in today. And as a dessert, I will offer you a reward for reading my blog.
Part 1: Understand what makes your customers happy.
1_Who are you? And what makes you so special?
2_Why don't you just ask your biggest fans?
3_The importance of collecting data.
4_Ok! I'm convinced. But how the hell am I doing this?
5_Where do I store all this new information?
Part 2: Reaching & Attracting (new) customers.
6_How do I look? Is this appealing?
7_Are you looking in the right places?
8_So you have found what you are looking for! Now what?
9_Are you speaking the right language?
10_You have the people where you want them, now what?
“Did you know that 63% of purchasing occasions begin online?”
part 1:
Understand what makes your (potential) customers happy.
1_Who are you? And what makes you so special?
The first step in selling your product or service, online or offline, is to understand what makes you special and stand out from the competition. To learn what you are worth to your ideal customer, you need to know your Value Proposition.
Your value proposition is your clear story that explains how your product or service solves your buyers' problem in a unique or superior way. It describes the benefits of your offer and why it is of value to your (potential) customer. To do so you need to first recognise what your customers' problem is, how you are solving it and why you are solving it better than your rivals are doing.
Some great examples of value propositions are:
Airbnb, the platform that lets you rent out your place to strangers, says that:
"Airbnb exists to create a world where anyone can belong anywhere, providing healthy travel that is local, authentic, diverse, inclusive and sustainable.”
Evernote is a note-taking and management application that keeps his value proposition nice and short:
"Remember Everything"
Do you want to create your value proposition in 6 easy steps? Sign up for our newsletter here:
“TIP! Make sure your value proposition is never longer than 150 characters so you can easily use it for your different social media channels. ”
2_Why don’t you just ask your biggest fans?
To fully understand the value of your offer to potential shoppers, take a closer look at your existing client base. You can ask them why they bought your product or service. Also, analyse which problem or challenge they were trying to overcome by doing so. And why they, in the end, choose you over the competition. Getting this information from people that have already taken steps to buy your product or service is gold. This leaves you from having restless nights trying to figure out your potential buyers' behaviour.
“By asking your existing client base why they buy your product will also help you understand what they expect from you. Companies often think they are solving a certain problem, but then realise that their expectations weren’t all accurate.”
3_The importance of collecting data.
We have all heard the saying: "Data is the new oil." If we think of data, we think of big databases being controlled by computer nerds. Data-experts trying to analyse and capture every movement you make. But data is a bit sexier than that.
You might think you have to be a data scientist to collect the right information, but it's quite easy. Also, don't be afraid to intrude on your client base or to invade peoples privacy. If your customers love your product or service, they will also love to share their thoughts with you. They will even desire to be part of improving your service or products.
4_Ok! I'm convinced. But how the hell am I doing this?
It's as simple as A/B/C. Start with 5 of your ideal clients that love your brand and would love to answer some questions. You can write them an email, reach out to them on social media or give them a call. Important is what you ask, rather than how many questions you ask. The more questionnaires you receive, the more accurate your data is, of course.
Some examples are:
In what way did my product/service help you the most?
What was the challenge or problem you were trying to overcome?
How did you find my product/service?
What do you like about my product/service?
What do you dislike about my product/service?
What advice would you give me/our company?
If you need help with that, sign up for our newsletter to receive our guide and easy-to-use examples in the future:
5_Where do I store all this new information?
Collecting data is one thing, but keeping an overview of it is another thing. Luckily there are some easy options out there.
““A buyer persona is a semi-fictional representation of your ideal customer based on market research and real data about your existing customers.””
Create Buyer Personas:
When creating your buyer persona(s), consider including customer demographics, behaviour patterns, motivations, and goals. The more detailed they are, the better. It's an easy way to keep track of the characteristics, preferred communication channels, goals and challenges of your target audience, all on one page. This will make it easier for you to take new decisions that will affect your customers and communicate with them in the right way.
You can create a buyer persona for every kind of client you have. Just make sure you don't create more than 3 different ones. And don't worry if you can't finish it all up in one go. A buyer persona is a living thing and should be tweaked every once in a while.
Find a step-by-step-guide and template to create your own, here.
Find a good CRM
Second of all, a good CRM (Client Relation Management) that automatically logs your information and allows you to store all your data in one place is a blessing. And it doesn't have to cost you a lot. There are many powerful options out there that have a free starter package, that can grow together with your company like Hubspot or Zoho. Or if your budget is not an issue you can go for Salesforce or a premium version of your preferred CRM.
To define your ideal CRM make sure that you investigate the best possible solution for your business. Ask around, look what works best for the type of organisation you are or get yourself advise from an independent and external party.
You can always reach out to me and plan a quick chat to give you some tips here:
Part 2:
Reaching & Attracting (new) customers
6_How do I look? Is this appealing?
One of the most important things in reaching the right audience is Brand identity. Buyers expect a certain look & feel that goes with what you offer. If you are for example a luxury racing car brand, a playful website in different colours with children playing in a sandbox on the homepage might not match the clients' expectation.
““Brand identity is the visible elements of a brand, such as colour, design, and logo, that identify and distinguish the brand in consumers’ minds.” ”
Consistency is essential within your brand identity. Make sure that you use the same look & feel for all your channels. Buyers won't trust your product or service if you are inconsistent in your communication. Don't send a email using a certain logo and colours and then lead your buyer to a website with a different logo and colours. They will find that odd.
So have your team, some trusted customers or a graphic designer look over your brand image from time to time. And make sure your visual communication matches your offerings and buyers' expectations. Once you have this all set up, it's time to start reaching your target audience and attract new customers.
7_Are you looking in the right places?
If you have already analysed your shoppers' behaviour, you will know where to reach your audience. This will help you find out where your marketing works best and maybe gives you some new ideas. Ask yourself where your client base is getting their information from and which channels they are using to find that information. Is it online, through their network or maybe from a professional magazine.
If you have already analysed your shoppers' behaviour, you will know where they have found your product or service. If you did not? Go back to step 4! :-)
Ask your client base where they are getting their information from and which channels they are using to find that information. Is it online, through their network or maybe from a professional magazine. The knowledge you gather helps you find out where your marketing efforts will work best. Furthermore, it can give you some new ideas.
Time for some Action! If you are using our template for Buyer Persona's, now is the time to continue working on them and update the right fields.
8_So you have found what you are looking for! Now what?
You know where your target audience rests. You understand how they behave, how they act and now it's time to reel them in.
To convert leads into clients, you need to understand these 3 phases:
Awareness Phase: The buyer is experiencing a certain need that will translate into a goal or challenge. This will be solved by purchasing something.
Consideration Phase: The buyer has clearly defined the goal or challenge and has committed to addressing it. It will evaluate the different approaches or methods available to pursue the goal or solve its challenge.
Decision Phase: The buyer has decided on a solution category and bought a service or product.
These steps are called a buyer journey. By understanding each step, your potential buyer will take, you can take an effort to lead the consumer to your product. It can be with a blog post, an ad campaign or pointing out the positive features of your product/service on your website.
9_Are you speaking the right language?
All your efforts will lead to your website one way or another. It's therefore very important to, first of all, understand when your potential customer is coming to your website. At which point in the customer journey this lead comes into contact with your homepage. This is important because it will make you understand what you need to provide them, but also what you should leave away.
Less is still more! You don't want your potential customer to get overwhelmed with the information that is provided to them. To help you with that, you can apply the three-click rule. The three-click rule is an unofficial web design rule concerning the design of website navigation. It suggests that a user of a website should be able to find any information with no more than three mouse clicks.
You can organise a little test panel to test this out. Ask a few people from your network to go through your website and let them try to find what they are looking for. Are some parts too hard to find? Are the expectations of certain sections on your website unclear? Can they get to the information they are looking for in three clicks?
10_You have the people where you want them, now what?
Getting your target audience to your website is a huge thing. So make sure you cherish your visitor. But getting that visitor to engage with you, is a whole different story. Very important here is to understand that there are different steps in wheeling a new customer in. There are several efforts you can take to inspire a potential customer to buy your service or product. Use techniques like the DISC-profile for the layout of your website and the AIDA-model for the texts on our website.
If you would like to know more about these topics and start converting online clients, sign up for our newsletter or get info on one of our workshops here:
And now. The long awaited award… A joke… :-)
Q: Why did the woman dump her marketer boyfriend?
A: Lack of engagement.
Thank you very much for reading my first blog. If you would like to leave a comment at the bottom, please do so. I would love your feedback.
With love,
Riccardo Straccia