The old saying goes that “customer is king.” If you want your business to flourish, it’s important that we place high premium on the opinions and behaviours of our customers, both existing and future. Too many times, we’ve worked with companies in the past that didn’t know much about their customers. Only that they had money to burn.
It doesn’t matter how much material or content you make for social media. You can make the best videos in the whole of your region. But unless you know who your customers are what makes them tick, those efforts will go to waste. Familiarising yourself with customer trends is your first step to building a great marketing strategy and consequently a great business.
Here are some customer trends to get you started off. Of course there is more. But these four have proven themselves to be significant leaps that bring significant results in the long haul and even the immediate.
After sales matters just as much (if not even more) than sales
A lot of content today is bent towards acquiring a new sale. But studies have shown time and time again that the cost of getting repeat business out of nurturing and taking care of existing clients is far less compared to getting new leads.
You can use your social media channels to target existing customers by using it as a customer service platform. Twitter has actually proven to be great for this (though it seems to be a dying platform). You can create video tutorials for YouTube that will show people how to maximise a product or service you provide.
Experience matters to customers
Because there is so much competition out there, one differentiating factor that sets you apart is the experience your brand provides. There are videos going viral online of Turkish ice cream vendors who troll their customers by providing a show of their customers before they get their ice cream. And they’re making a killing out of the exposure! Why does that work? Because customers are looking for a different and fresh experience all the time. Does your brand provide that?
Trust is a greater factor to purchase than ever before
Brands stick not because of a cool logo, a great advertising run or some amazing videos. They stick because of the trust people correlate with great visuals. When you mention a brand, people get excited not because you’re logo uses the right fonts (unless you’re a design nerd) but because you know that the brand is authentic and it can be trusted.
Gaining a target persona’s trust is harder than ever before in a world full of scammers. But it’s worth every effort to build trust with your clientele and to make sure that it’s maintained.
More and more customers are becoming values-driven
As a species, human beings operate on the principle of values- meaning we draw near to things that align with what we believe in. Marketing isn’t about convincing people that you’re values are better than theirs. It’s about proving that the values of your brand do not differ from theirs.
People buy houses when they provide the security people value. People go to restaurants when they provide quality family time that they value. What are your customers values? Is it productivity, authenticity, uniqueness, religion, patriotism? If so, how can you align your values with theirs?
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