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Gain Clarity In Your Business To Drive Revenue Growth – Part 4

customer journey marketing planning Feb 11, 2019

In Part 1 of this series, we talked about the importance of gaining clarity on your vision, mission and guiding principles and aligning your branding to showcase them. In Part 2, we discussed how your community involvement, social media presence, and overall reputation affect how your business is seen in your community. In Part 3, we looked at how your products & services, employees, customers and vendors all come together to paint a picture of how your business operates.

Now that you have examined your company from the inside and thought about how people see it from the outside, you “know yourself”. It is time to get to know your customer. As discussed in Part 1, only then can you operate from a position of strength and truly grow your business. Today, we are going to concentrate on gaining clarity on your market, creating customer avatars and using feedback from current customers to make improvements.

Market

Everyone has a market that their business operates in – some businesses have a very specific niche and others can reach a much broader audience. You’ve probably looked at this before, but to move forward and grow your business, take another look. Your market may have changed since you started your business.

1. What problem do you solve? Who has this problem and needs what you do?
2. Look at your current customers. What attributes do they share? Can you use these shared attributes to find new customers?
3. What are your competitors doing? What can you learn from them to grow your market share?
4. How do your customers shop? Where do they shop? How can you reach them effectively?

Avatar

Depending on your products and services, you may have different types of customers. The difference could be the product or service itself, the location of the customer, the way you reach the customer, or the way your customer buys your product or service. Take some time to identify your customer types. This will be critical for the next stage – building a customer journey. Before we get to the journey, let’s build an avatar for each of your customers.

  1. Give your avatar a real name. Find a picture online that represents your avatar.
  2. What do they do? Why do they need you?
  3. How will they benefit from working with you?
  4. How can you reach them and engage with them so they know they need you?
  5. How do they make buying decisions? What channel will they most likely purchase through?

Feedback

Your current customers are a treasure trove of information. If you ask them sincerely, they will tell you the good, the bad, and the ugly.

  1. Be intentional in your questions – have a specific goal in mind that you want to work on that your customers can help you with.
  2. Keep your questions simple – one topic at a time, non-judgmental , and relevant to their business.
  3. Let your customers know up front that you will respond back to them and are sincere in working to provide better service.
  4. Have a plan to keep feedback organized.
  5. Review the feedback to see how your customers feel about your business. Celebrate the good and determine how to take the bad and the ugly out of your business.
  6. Communicate with your customers to let them know how valuable their feedback was to you and changes you are making as a result.

Now that you have identified your customers and determined what makes them tick, it is time to build your customer journey – an intentional plan which determines how you will interact with your customer at every stage from prospect to long term customer. We will discuss this further next week in Part 5 of our series. See you soon!

 

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