Your customers are very valuable as when they trust your brand, they become repeat buyers. They will also spread the word about your business to their family and friends.
That is why you should stay in touch with them in order to find out what their needs are and how to satisfy them.
What Needs Do Your Customers Have?
One important thing you need to know when building a strong relationship is to understand why your customers are buying from you in the first place. Of course, you want them to buy because they want to use your product or service, but even if they’ve purchased from you in the past, that’s not their main motivation. Customers buy because they want to solve a problem they have.
They identify a specific problem that they want to solve, then they look for products or services that can help them solve that problem. As a business, you need to understand what your customers would like to solve. You need to understand their unique needs, and how you can help them.
Let’s look at five major needs every customer wants satisfied.
1. Fulfilling Their Yearning
As a business, your job is to make your customers happy. You do this by providing them with a solution to the problem they want to solve (or, to look at it from the opposite direction, to provide a solution to a vision or goal that they want to achieve). This will make them fulfilled, and they will keep coming back to you because they want more of what they bought the first time.
In order to understand your customers’ needs, you will want to ask yourself these questions:
- What types of emotions do your customers want to solve?
- What are their goals?
- How will their life improve once it’s solved? What new emotions will they feel?
For example, if you are selling a product or service, you will want to ask yourself, “What do they want to achieve with this product or service?” If you understand what they want to achieve and why it’s important to them, you will be able to provide them with options that will help them achieve their goal.
2. Optimum Price Of Products Or Services
Most customers want to get their money’s worth… And when you provide undiluted value in contrast with the price, they’ll place you at the top of their list.
They may also be attracted to your product or service because you might be able to provide them with a better price than the competition.
However, this doesn’t imply that you should bring your prices ridiculously low. If you focus on being the cheapest on the market, in the end, you lose. Why? – because it will be impossible to attract your target market and then deliver the level of service they expect.
3. Unmatched Quality
Quality means everything when it comes to customer satisfaction. If a customer is going to spend money on your product or service, they want to know that it’s going to last more than a day, week, or month. They want to know that you take pride in what you do and that your promise will be kept in every aspect.
By going out of your way by providing quality service and products, you’ll be able to get your prospective customers hooked.
4. Variety Of Options
For some customers, your product or service is the best fit for the job. However, there might be another product or service that offers more or is better catered to what they are looking for. As a business owner, you can’t expect a repeat buyer if you don’t meet their needs.
Let’s take Apple Inc. as an example. They make it easy to choose from an impressive range of products in order to meet the needs of their customers. When selling a product or service, you need to find a way to give your customers a variety of options. If they don’t have options, they might move on to a competitor that does. That could cause you to lose a customer.
The more choices customers have, the easier it will be for them to decide which option is best and the more likely they are going to buy from you.
5. Easy Access
To build a strong relationship with your customers, you need to make it easy for them to buy. If it is within your reach, you want to make it as convenient as possible with an easy-to-use shopping cart, secure payment methods, and simple shipping.
In fact, the easier you make it for your customers to buy, the more likely they are going to buy.
This is especially true with eCommerce. Your potential customers will look to you to provide a shopping experience where they don’t have to deal with the hassle of going to the store, parking their car, and finding what they are looking for.
If you can provide that, you will be able to make customers out of them, and they will buy from you regularly.
Engaging Your Customers – Why Is It Important?
This concept cannot be stressed enough. When you put in the effort to engage your customers, your business will surely flourish.
Below are some important reasons to have an engagement strategy:
1. To Build A Long-Lasting Relationship
Engaging customers helps you to foster a long-term relationship with them. This means that your customers will keep coming back to you for more. To do this, you need to know your customers and also be able to understand their needs.
You can’t expect people to buy from you if you don’t communicate with them. Once you take the time and put in the effort to engage your customers, you will be able to understand their wants and needs. You will also be able to provide them with better products and services.
2. To Keep Them Regularly Informed About Your Products And/Or Services
Being engaged with your customers doesn’t just help you to earn their trust, it also helps you to keep them knowledgeable about your products and services.
Take the time to keep your customers informed about your product by offering them value in the form of blog posts, e-books, e-newsletters, webinars, free reports, and more.
Your goal is to create content that is valuable enough for them to read, and even to be shared among their family and friends.
3. To Nurture Unparalleled Trust Between You And Your Customers
When your customers know you and they know you are providing them with valuable products and services, they are more likely to trust you. When you have the trust of your customers, they are more likely to buy from you and come back for more.
The image and reputation of your business influences how you are initially perceived by your customers and is usually a big part of their decision whether to buy your product or service.
4. To Make Them Loyal Brand Customers
As a business owner, you want to create an emotional connection with your customers by providing them with a rewarding experience that can’t be replicated anywhere else. You want to create an environment where your customers don’t want to do business with anyone else.
To do this, you need to ask yourself the following two questions:
- Why should I develop a relationship with this customer?
- How can I make my customers feel like they can’t live without me?
By doing this, you will have the opportunity to sell more than one product (or service) to a customer. After all, you are offering them something that they can’t get anywhere else… not just a result but an unparalleled and rewarding experience.
This means that you will have a continuous stream of business coming directly from that customer.
5. To Promote Free And Easy Access Of Communication
When you work to foster communication with your customers, you will be able to give them a voice. You will also be able to stay in touch with them through newsletters, email campaigns, etc.
This is extremely important because when you have open communication channels, it’ll help to ensure that you build a reputation with your customers as someone who offers valuable content. This way, you’ll give them the freedom to express their expectations and emotions and also become the go-to-guy for your customers.
In Conclusion…
Your customers are your business. If you want your business to grow, you need to nurture your relationship with them. By understanding and engaging them, you will be able to get them to buy from you.
About Christy Kiltz
Christy Kiltz is the owner of Design! by Kiltz Internet Solutions and has been taking care of business owners online since 2001. Her high-touch digital agency is located in Southern Oregon and provides comprehensive online marketing services and technology solutions that free up business owners to focus on what they love to do instead.
According to Christy, “Service-based business clients come to us spinning their wheels trying to make money online. We form a partnership to turn their websites into lead-generating machines. Our White Glove Growth program is designed to help you get more leads and grow your business.”
In addition to building websites and offering technical support, Christy’s primary focus is education and empowerment. By toning down the “geek” and offering practical tools easily understood by non-technical folks, Christy opens the black box of technology with classes, webinars, and web tips developed to demystify digital marketing. With ease and a bit of humor, she reminds us that while technology continues to move forward at warp speed, many foundational marketing principles remain.
Christy Kiltz joins us as a regular contributor to share her digital marketing expertise with our business community. Enjoy her articles and commentaries!
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