Every company dreams of having a long list of satisfied customers. Imagine the dream where customers are waiting for your services or products and expanding your number of employees. But how do you make this dream into reality and turn potential customers into loyal buyers?
Before customers can enjoy your company’s products or services, they need to be aware of what you offer and be motivated to make a purchase. Reaching the right target group is more challenging than it might seem. Each target segment has different characteristics and motivations to do something. It is therefore important to know who your target audience is and how to effectively reach them. In this article, we will share some of our most valuable tips to become best friends with your target audience and turn them into loyal customers.
Map out your target audience
Who are the people that you are targeting? Before your company can strategically reach the target audience, it is important to have a detailed image of your target group. By understanding the characteristics of your potential customers, your company can implement strategies to reach the target audience successfully. You should therefore start by mapping out your target audience.
Give one of your marketing employees the job to learn as much as possible about the target group. Give him or her the opportunity to conduct desk research or primarily research. This employee could even interview members of your target group to directly learn about their values and characteristics. This will not only help your company receive valuable information but will also give your target group a positive impression of your company. It shows that your company values the target group’s wishes. After these interviews, you and your team can observe where and how your products or services could fit into your target group’s everyday lives.
Use online channels your target audience uses
To reach your target group, you must act like your target group’s friend. After researching the target group, you will now have insights into which online channels your target audience utilizes and what type of content they like to see. You have to keep in mind that your customers will not come to you, but you will have to come to them.
The best way to reach your target group is via social media. Use the channels that they are using and develop a communication strategy to create your unique selling point. By being active on the same social media channels as your target audience, your company will have the opportunity to get into the feed of your potential customers. Develop unique and interesting content that your target group would like to see and be patient; Rome was also not built in one day.
Create value
The next important factor to consider is; How are customers going to remember your company? This is a question that you must ask yourself. What makes your company unique? Or why should they buy your products? Customers are only going to remember your company because you can offer them something of value. In this step, it is important to create a value statement and communicate this value to your customers. By setting a strong value proposition, your customers will have a reason to buy your products as you show them what you can offer to them
It is important to align all the communication with the value statement that you created. In the communication strategy, you can for example include a campaign that you share on all of the social media channels. By linking all of the channels with the same value statement, your customers will see that your company legitimately cares about its presentation and therefore the services. Furthermore, it is important to implement a regular posting schedule to keep it interesting for your customers to follow you on social media. Until this day, many companies underestimate the power of social media. Social media can be your key to success!
Branding
After creating your value statements and communication strategies, it is important to create a strong brand identity. Keep in mind how you look at a person on the streets. You remember their clothing style and personality. This goes exactly the same for how customers view companies. You should start by creating your own communication style. How does your company want to be perceived? As a formal serious company or as a supportive friend? The communication style should be visible on all the social media posts.
The next step is to collect colors that will be the company’s brand colors. This could be two, three or four colors that will be presented everywhere. Think of the logo, the products, the office, etc. As a company it is important to have brand colors as this will be a point of recognition for the target group. Your customers will recognize your company in its unique style.
Keep in touch
The final but maybe most important aspect of becoming friends with your customers is by maintaining the relationship. You will have to view the relationship with your customers as how you maintain friends in your daily life; you keep in contact with each other. Customers will probably not contact your company, so you have the responsibility to keep in touch with them. It’s all about offering good after care and customer service.
After someone has purchased your product, you want them to come back to you and to buy the product again. A smart and relatively easy way to do this is via mass emailing. After someone has made an online purchase, you should ask the customer for consent to keep their email address. Your company could send mass email from Gmail to reach all the customers with one click. These emails could be newsletters or discount codes that are interesting for your customers.
By sharing informative emails or messages, the customers will create a feeling for the brand that hopefully will turn into brand loyalty.
