You’ve been in business for a while and want to increase your profits and grow the business. You’ve been stressing as to whether you should concentrate on lowering your cost or increasing your revenue. Perhaps you need to be looking at the business from a totally different vantage point. Here are three keys to growing and sustaining your business and they start with your customer.
photo credit: woodleywonderworks
1. Understand Your Favorite Customer
It doesn’t matter how good your product or service is or how good you or your business is. If you don’t understand who your favorite customers are and what pain they’re suffering, you will not be able to make them satisfied. There are five variables to be considered in understanding the favorite customer: their physical location, their demographics, how they think, how they behave and the words and phrases they use when discussing your business and your product/service.
2. Build a Marketing Message
The second principle for business success is that you need a marketing message that describes clearly and concisely what your product does for that favorite customer. This message must show the customer how you will take away the pain and why he/she will be happy and contented doing business with your company. This message must be in the words that the customer relates to, the same words he/she uses when they discuss your product/service.
3. Communicate This Message To The Customer
The third principle for business success is promoting your product or service. Now you know whom you’re targeting and what your message is and since you understand all of the variables concerning your favorite customer, you can figure out how to promote your product/service. This means either directly selling to the customer or advertising or indirect selling to get the message to him/her.
Remember that the most important principle for business success is strong customer satisfaction. This requires an emphasis on marketing that permeates the entire organization. Everyone must think about selling and satisfying customers all day long.
Also remember that the core purpose of a business is not to “make a profit,” rather it is to “create and keep a customer.” Profits are the result of cost effectively creating and keeping a sufficient number of customers.
