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Dont allow your customers to choose you. You should choose them!

March 26, 2018

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A very common marketing mantra you hear as you attempt connecting with your potential customers is, “Never allow your customers to choose you.” Instead, you should be the one who gets to choose your customers. At the face, this advice seems unique and quite contradictory!.  All your sales and marketing efforts focus on getting your target audience’s attention so they choose you. But then you turn around and say, “Nope, you get to choose your customers, and not the other way around!” What’s all that about? Let’s look at this concept in a little more detail, shall we?

The concept of target customers

The very first step of any strong marketing strategy is to define your target customers. Well, this is indeed your first step toward choosing your customers. What you achieve with this step is to create a smart perimeter around the audience. This is where YOU are choosing your potential customers for your brand.

Knowing your target audience better

The next step of choosing your customer is to find out more about them even before you approach them. Who are they? What do they love? What is their pain point that your brand can solve? Which dream of theirs can your brand realize? Many such questions help you create strong personas who represent your target audience.

Letting your target audience know about you

So now that you have identified who your future customers are, your next critical step is to get their attention and build a connect with them. Not an easy job! But with a clear strategy and a well-planned storytelling approach, you can easily gain their attention.  Established brands can easily profile their customers and build super strong personas that they can work on to expand their reach.

Let them come to you and make them stay

Once you know your potential customers super well and they trust you, targeted messages and personalized interactions will definitely help you build a positive experience with them. Don’t forget – once you have found your customer invest extensively in nurturing the relationship.

On the other hand, if a customer is going to be picking you from a whole set of hopeful potentials, the scope for a relationship of equals is definitely quite slim.

The risks involved when your customers choose you – a small story

We often spot unhealthy customer–brand relationship rights at the word go! When the constant complaints and unnerving meetings are not a reflection of your brand’s faults, then it definitely points to a potentially toxic interaction. This scenario usually happens when you rush ahead in desperation and agree to every single initial demand of a nagging customer.

When your customer’s a known face in the market and you stand to gain, very often you throw all caution in the wind to grab the “chance.” This is when we very often make mistakes. Let me tell you a story. We were once selected by a large group for what we thought then to be a prestigious project. This was our initial days of entrepreneurship. So without any background check or risk assessment we promptly agreed to all their points. What followed was a continuous cycle of work and rework. We got caught in the customer’s internal war for dominance, and as a result, our work suffered. A whole lot of “starting from scratch,” brand new instructions, and contradictory specs killed our experience. This experience was quite a jolt to our confidence as we realized with a shock what “being chosen” actually meant. Seth Godin’s lessons about “choosing your customer” really dawned on us.

This is when we decided to take a step back and refocus our energies into choosing our customers. But what are the benefits of this approach? Here are a few pointers.

Advantages of choosing your customers
  1. This brilliant approach helps you look within yourselves. It helps you understand the value your brand can create in the target market
  2. It helps you identify exactly the type of customers you can work with smoothly and deliver a spectacular experience
  3. This approach helps you fine tune your expertise and build new ones. All the positivity of your expertise will definitely inspire you to innovate further and explore new avenues.
  4. Your customers also feel happy about associating with your brand since you are delivering your best
  5. You find among the best brand ambassadors in your customers who will definitely be loyal to your brand
Conclusion – No more rocky rides when you choose your customers

Finding the best fit for your brand is one of the most critical ingredients for success. At the initial stage of business, your insecurity threatens to get the better of you. So you land up casting marketing nets across an unclear, in-assessed market. This desperate approach often gets you customers quickly but very often they are not the ones you are looking for.  So be smart, take a step back and build a strategy around finding your own customers.

raj@addkraft.com

contact@addkraft.com


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