Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

By Henry Brown

Growth in small business continues apace with over 31 million registered in 2020 alone. Having a clear understanding of your ideal customer will be key to finding and keeping customers.

Having that understanding of the needs of your target customers is a key aspect of market research for anyone setting up a business. You will want to develop a marketing and sales plan to set out how you are going to reach customers.

Finding new Customers: Market research and market reports

Conducting market research and preparing reports based on your key target market will help you understand the customer but also their buying habits. Having this knowledge will allow you to:

– Sell effectively

– Compete within the market

– Target potential new customers

– Identify gaps in the market and new business opportunities.

Conducting online surveys is an excellent way to learn more about potential customers and their wants and needs. Fortunately, there are easy tools for doing this, such as those provided by Qualtrics. As well as your own market research, reading up on general trends and buying habits of customers from primary and secondary market research will help you build a clear picture of your customer and help you avoid pitfalls when marketing to potential customers.

Finding new customers: Understanding your competitors

Knowing and understanding your competitors and what they are offering helps you to offer customers added value. This knowledge is so important as it can help with:

– Pricing your product

– Improve your product

– Developing a successful marketing strategy

– Respond to competition.

Keeping an eye on competitors is important in business, not just established businesses but any threats that may be posed by new entrants coming into your field of business.

Retaining customers: Understanding your customer needs

You may feel you have a great service or product to offer customers. However, if this isn’t meeting the needs of customers then you won’t make any sales, it’s that simple!

Knowing and understanding the needs of your customer is important to retain them. This also means if the needs of your customers change, having the flexibility to change and innovate will be important to retaining them.

Retaining customers: Managing your customer service

Managing your customer contact, obtaining feedback, and offering loyalist schemes is a great way of retaining customers.

Customer service is such a key element of business success as good customer service will keep people coming back time and time again. It is therefore important to look at your business how a customer would from the first contact on the telephone right through to the end of the sales process. Each time a customer experiences a good service they are likely to tell others about the excellent service which will improve your reputation within the market and as well as retaining customers will gain you new ones too.

In conclusion

The above are ways you can obtain and keep customers. Remember though that how you set up your business and having the right indemnity is extremely important. Reaching out to a professional to help steer you will be key to ensuring you are and your customers are protected, the likes of Rockwell Legal Group can help you ensure you and your customers are protected.

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Henry Brown is an online marketing executive. When he isn’t talking shop, he’s roaming the streets of London, uncovering the extra-ordinary in the ordinary.