20 Jan Create the Need and They Will Come

Do your sales seem lower than you thought they should be? Are you seeing less customers coming through your door or visiting your homepage? Perhaps the problem is not that you don’t have a great product to offer but you don’t know how to properly present it. While knowing that you are an experienced company that is trustworthy is important, it is not the crucial element that is needed to make sure that you get the sale that you want. In order to properly market a product you have to address the need of your customer. In the beginning of the article, I addressed your need for more sales and you kept on reading because that was what you were looking. Keep in mind that your customer is already looking for something, but now it is time to convince them that this item is the best one suited for that purpose.
Think of how your customer is using the item that you are selling and convince them that it will do the best job. There is an example that I read on the Drew’s Marketing Minute blog about how a professor brought in a shovel into class and asked the student’s to create an ad marketing the shovel. The students talked about the different attributes of the shovel. The professor told them that they had missed the point. “Let me tell you the secret to selling this shovel,” the professor told the class, “ The secret is to realize that no one wants to buy a shovel because they want a shovel. They buy a shovel because they want a hole.”
When people buy your item or service they are looking for an experience that will meet their expectations. How you market yourself will completely make or break that customer’s experience. If I bought the shovel for instance, I would expect it to break up the ground easily and to hold a pretty large load of dirt on the blade. In order to properly market to your customer’s you will have to know what it is that they expect.
So how can you know what it is that your customers really want or are expecting from your product? Here are some following suggestions to get you started.
Hire a marketing consultant: If you are a company that is looking to expand, but you don’t have your own official marketing department, it may be time to consider hiring a marketing consultant. A marketing consultant will be able to walk you through how to properly market to your customers and work to deliver your sales number goal.
Hire someone to go undercover: Hire someone to go undercover and interact with customers so they can get an opinion from your customers. The undercover person could also conduct an evaluation on the customer service that they received from your employees and their general overall experience in your store.
Have a marketing research panel or survey: As a business owner you should have an email sign up list on your website or in your stores. This is a perfect example of why they are so useful. Those that sign up for the email updates are likely loyal customers who have been shopping with you for awhile. Send out a panel invite or a survey invite through their email and give them an incentive to do it like a coupon for a percentage off their purchase. Ask these loyal customers about your store or brand. What do they like about it? What do they dislike? Then ask them about a new product that you are launching and even get their opinion on your advertising campaign. By showing them a few different commercials and asking them which ad would make them want to buy your product the most, you will get a pretty good idea about the demands of your audience.
These tactics will help you to better know the demands of your customers. Knowing your customer better will make it easier to make the sales that you want and to figure out which products most appeal to them. The true secret to marketing is not about having the best product but knowing your customer’s needs and delivering a product that fits those needs.