As a business owner, spending some time to know your customers can make a big difference in reaching out to them and improving your sales. More people — millennials especially — are starting their own businesses, whether it’s home-based or a small brick-and-mortar store.
Starting up a business is never easy, much less running it. But with the right tools and know-hows on how to get the job done, you can accelerate your growth and not be left behind.
One of the most effective ways to achieve phenomenal growth in any kind of business is by taking a customer-centric approach to marketing and by putting the customers first.
What’s at Stake
Companies who fail at communicating with their customers have been known for making the worst marketing flops. They assume customers will like a certain kind of product or service when the fact is, they want something else. The result is often a totally useless product that completely misses the target market.
To make up for this, companies will try every trick in the book just to get people to like it. They would spend millions of dollars on ads and promotional materials to no avail in hopes of recouping their investments.
If all people care about is how they can take advantage of the business opportunity with little or no regard to customer satisfaction, they have to stop and rethink their strategy; otherwise they go out of business.
The key is to know your customers first and foremost, and define your unique value proposition. Spending some time to know your customers and making them your priority will always pay off in the long run.
Why Businesses Fail
The vast majority of businesses that failed are those that are just starting up. Bloomberg reports that for every 10 startups, 8 will crash and burn within the first 18 months.
In a study conducted by Peppers and Rogers Group, 70 percent of the customers leave a company because of poor service and 60 percent fail to convert into customers because they felt customer service is indifferent to their needs.
Some of the reasons why businesses fail include:
- Failure to innovate
Customers can grow tired of the same old stuff. If you’re stuck with just one particular product or style, your chances for growth and expansion is very slim. When it comes to your marketing strategy, innovation is also key. If you don’t have a web portal, a landing page, or even just a social media account to your brick-and-mortar business, you’ve already lost a substantial amount of potential customers to your competitors. The time you stop innovating is the time you start losing ground to them.
- Failure to differentiate
What is your unique value proposition? Customers tend to remember brands or companies because they are among the few who stand out from the rest. If you’re trying to compete with an already existing market, you’re going to have a tough fight ahead of you. Find your own niche, do something new from time to time, but try not to go overboard. Otherwise, you might actually get the opposite of what you want.
- Failure to communicate
This, perhaps, is the most crucial part and where most companies would either float or sink to the bottom. The majority of traditional outbound marketing practices are just one-way communication. They don’t care if you’re listening or not; they’ll just say what they want you to hear. We all know how that turned out in some companies — and it’s never cheap.
Keeping your lines of communication open for your customers enables you to stay ahead of the competition by knowing exactly what they want and by giving them the right products and quality service that they deserve. To be successful, you need to have the right tools to bring your business closer to them and accomplish the task much faster.
Small Business Dream’s Survey Engine is an amazing feature that allows business owners to create their own customized surveys with very little effort. Or, they can interact with their customers via email, social media, or on the phone using its automated and semi-automated features.
Small Business Dream simplifies the work for you by providing a CRM designed specially for small business owners like you. We provide you with a suite of tools to know your customers better and boost your sales in ways you never thought possible.