Startup owners need to be more strategic and intentional with their marketing strategies. Traditional marketing is out of the question with a tight budget.
A better approach is customer-centric. Target buyer personas are most likely to engage with your brand, easy to retain, and are more loyal. In this article, we discuss how to create these personas and interact with them.
Understanding your Audience
Most people have characteristics and traits they want in an ideal partner. When you find a person that matches your perfect partner, you woo them and care for them, so your relationship becomes long-term.
In business, we do not offer or goods and services to everybody. The wrong customer can bring down potential customers. When you find customers that fit your profile of ideal buyers, your goal is to create long-term clients. Just as it is expensive to woo a new partner, so is mass marketing a costly ideal.
Customer insight is essential to compete on a tight budget and personalise your service. You know when to hire additional staff, create promotional adverts, and launch your campaign to the right audience when they are most likely to buy. Here are some ways to collect customer data:
Creating Buyer Profiles
Start by creating buyer personas or descriptions of your ideal customers. You can have segmented buyer personas based on demographics and values. Necessary information may include location, gender, age, budget, occupation, interests, buying habits, concerns, and motivations.
Website Analysis
Analyse customer interactions on your website as well. Analytic tools determine your customer’s buying journey from start to finish. These tools also help identify holes where buyers stop in their journey.
Market Research
Sometimes, the quickest way to get the information you need is to ask. Do market research on your existing customers through customer surveys, feedback forms, mystery shoppers, online reviews, and forums. When you take the time to listen to your customers, you learn from them, clarify your existing knowledge, and make them feel valued.
Online Paid Surveys
Web surveys are great, but with paid surveys, you gain detailed information from your customers. Target existing customers and your strongest buyer segments when providing incentives.
Engaging Ideal Customers
Customers are most likely to participate when a brand comes alive. Communicate with your audience, ace your customer service, and continually ask for feedback.
Let us discuss some ways to engage with your audience:
Get Social
A business page on major social networks better establishes your startup. It attracts local customers and makes your business more trustworthy. Social analytics tools are also vital to data collection.
Provide Value
Create content that is relatable to your audience. Establish yourself as a thought leader. Publish blogs, video content, and freebies that add value to the lives of your customers. Let them see how your solutions fit into their daily lives.
Direct Marketing
What you communicate speaks volumes about how much you know your audience. Personalise message directed at your target audience tells them you listen and value your business relationship. It is equally essential to identify channels your audience uses the most to communicate with you, such as email, website, Facebook messenger, Twitter DM, or phone.
Once you had your customer profiles and targeted messaging, you can utilise the following strategies:
- Send a Message on Social Media– Encourage existing customers to engage more often with discounts and birthday coupons sent directly as a personal message.
- Email Marketing– This cost-effective strategy, when done right, is beneficial. Avoid sending mass emails that end up in spam. Target subscribers and buyer segments that get more use out of your offer.
- Direct Mail– Millennials are highly responsive to this type of marketing. Postcards, catalogues, and handwritten personalised messages capture their attention. If your clients are oldies, you know they prefer physical mail to digital mail.
- SMS or IM– Your mates are on their mobile phones more than on any device. This messaging encourages responsiveness, but you need to take caution. Only send messaging relevant to the needs of your customers.
Wrap Up
Competition and the pressure to meet sales goals push startups to improve their strategies. Start on the right foot by building profiles of your ideal customers and getting insight into their buying journey. Communicate with them with relevant content that provides value, ask for feedback, and promote directly with targeted messaging. Retaining ideal customers will be better for your brand in the long-term than continually marketing to a large group of Aussies that may or may not need your product or service.
