Are you listening to your customers?
When I was a kid we moved into a new, old home. New to us, however 50+ years old, at the end of the front verandah was a black rose. Yes black, not dark red, deep purple or any other colour but BLACK.
My Mum took a photo of it and after 12 photos were taken, off she went to the local chemist to have it sent away to the photo lad to be processed for $24. That might not sound as if it was much but it was a huge deal; in late 1970’s a price of a loaf of bread was 54c and that was from the bakery not a big subsidised supermarket.
The photos came back red. My Mum was devastated, she had spent all this time getting the right light, the composure, the angle on these photos of this precious BLACK rose. She repeated this process again and this time took it directly to the local photo and told the salesperson that the photos were of a BLACK rose and not a red rose and please don’t correct the colours. As you can imagine the cost was even higher this time unfortunately, the result was the same and the photos came back red again.
Are you listening to your customers?
The reason I tell you this story is because these 2 service providers didn’t listen to their customer, my Mum and assumed they know what she wanted? As a business owner have you ever made that assumption?
This product would be better for the client because they can’t afford the other one.
We have all hear stories of rich business people going into expensive car sales rooms in their garden clothes to see if they will get real service or not?
Customers like to buy not be sold too!
When offering your products and services are you giving enough information so that your customer can make a choice:
- To buy
- What to buy
- Have options
Customers of today are very savvy and can obtain reams of information in a heartbeat, are you being part of there sale journey, do you have the information they need on your website, promotional material?
Tell your customer what they want to know.
Customers often just need a little more information to help them with their choice. If you are being asked the same questions over and over the easiest way to address this have a Frequency Asked Questions (FAQ) section on your website.
Generally, the people that ask are just the tip of the iceberg and many more potential and current customers want to know but don’t want the hassle of asking, so just move on.
What do my customers want to know?
Ask. It is a good practice to ask your customers if they are happy with your service, your products and if there are other things you could be doing to help them. It is far cheaper to keep loyal customers and get them to buy from you again than try to convince new customers to buy from you.
A lot of business’ spend far to much time and money trying to attract new customers with – this discount or that offer and quite often this approach can drive your existing customers to your competition because they are offering their “New” customers a better deal.
People are creatures of habit and we like easy.
The number 1 reason customers leave is indifference!
Customer will go through all the effort of finding a new supplier and leave your business when they think you don’t care. Caring, this is why a lot of big brand have loyalty programs where they are emailing, messaging and sending you things by snail mail to make you feel special and make sure you remember them.
Are you listening to your customers?
Today’s tip of the day is to listen to your customers, really listen and ask them questions about what they want and like. Go through your database and contact some old customers who you haven’t seen for a while and find out how you can help them now.
People like to deal with businesses they KNOW – LIKE – TRUST. To build trust is not as hard as you might think, start with the little things, start by listening to your current customers, make them feel special.
As much as some people do not like it, social media definitely has its place in the business world. Businesses are popping up everyday, run exclusively online and taking advantage of the huge audience available on social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, allowing people to make an income from home and connect to networks and groups within the same industry.
Have you heard the phrase “don’t feed the trolls”? This is valuable advice that will not only save you hours of personal turmoil and distress but also reinforce your credibility and professionalism on your social media platform. As tempting as it is to reply back to these keyboard warriors to justify yourself or defend your business, these exchanges can quickly turn hostile and aggressive, leaving a trail of abuse for everyone to see.
Hashtags are king in the Instagram world.
Hashtags help people who do or like the same things you do to find your posts. The hashtags help organise photos and video content, putting them into categories that help followers looking for things that interest them to discover your feed. You need to make them relevant.
Do you have your hashtags organised relevant to your posts? Or are they simply a big clump of copy and paste words you attach to every post? The higher your reach and the more engagement you get, the less Instagram will ‘allow’ you to just post the same 30 hashtags every time. And yes, a post all 30 hashtags, EVERY TIME, so think about your hashtags ahead of time. The best strategy is to have several collections of hashtags to attach to different posts. For example, your post about kids cooking should not contain #grownupfood or #dogsofig, but there are hundreds of hashtags you can come up with to describe kids cooking. Save these collections on your phone in Notes or Memos (as you can only use Instagram from a mobile device) and mix up your hashtags for each post. Save multiple groups of hashtags.
Do your research, stalk everybody’s account and make notes. Have a look at your target audience and find the ones that fit your content. Check out your competitors and see which hashtags are getting them the results you want. Whilst it’s not professional to simply copy a competitor’s hashtag collection, it also shows you have no imagination or creativity yourself, so just pick up a few and spice them up to fit your own brand. And don’t forget the social influencers! These people do exceptionally well on Instagram for whatever reason in their own industry. Learn from the best in your industry and have a good look around their well-established following.
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