How Do You Become a Staple in the Life of Your Customers?

With the ubiquity of technology in our daily lives today, brands and the companies behind them have the ability to continuously interact with customers and become a part of their daily routines.

Understanding your target customers has become more important than ever.

Whether you're a B2C business or a B2B business, your customers and the problems you solve for them will define you.

Defining Your Customers

So, where do you start? It begins by defining your target market. This is a group of customers with common characteristics regarding how, where and why they buy. When you define your target market, you will then segment them based on their differences to get a better look at your customer groups, for example:

• Do some of your customers buy online while others through retail channels?
• Are some customers buying to support a hobby and others a profession?
• What is it that makes businesses buy from you?, Is it the low price? or is it convenience or the quality of your products?

Look over the last 12 months of sales and analyze your customer characteristics. Group them into segments based on similarities. This gives you your first pass at market segmentation. What if you are developing a new product, though? If that’s the case, you may have to experiment to clarify who your ideal buyer is. This is part of narrowing in on product/market fit and can be done by developing a hypothesis about who the ideal buyers are. Then get your products in their hands to validate assumptions, get feedback on likes and dislikes, and explore any new insights that arise that could add more value, create a better experience, or expand your view of potential customers. A well-defined process?we recommend using is Adele Revella’s buyer persona approach.

Once you have defined your target market, you can then start to build a bridge to your customers, allowing you to strengthen connections that will help to create and sustain business growth.

Identify how customers are using your products. What are they doing with the products and how are those items helping them in their everyday life? When you have a better understanding of how your products or services are being used, you can see why they are being chosen.

Determine who is using the products in these different ways. Different products will naturally have different audiences, and by learning more about who is using the products, it helps you to better define your target for marketing. Get to know more about the demographics of your customers, but don’t stop there.

Building the Relationship with Your Customers

When building that bridge, you have two things to consider—your customers and your business. When you are successful, you become an extension of your customers and the work they do. You should start by getting a clear understanding of the problem that you are solving for them. Explore their perspective and empathize with their needs. Meet them where they are at the point of use and get insights into why they choose your business over your competitors.

Once you do this, you can build your product roadmap and the supporting delivery channels to make it as easy as possible for your customers to continue choosing you.

Of course, to do this you need to bring those customer insights into your business. Your company, including the people that work there, your products and your capabilities, are what create benefits for your customers.

Take the time to determine what it is that makes your product or service different in the eyes of the customers. What is it that they value that you can bring into your culture and how people work??

When you can answer those questions, you can start to close the gap between you and your customers. By making your customers’ priorities your own, finding shared values and watching the trends that impact their work, you can start to truly strengthen the relationships between your business and your customers.

Listen to what your customers have to say as well. Listen to their feedback and actively request feedback about your products and service. Having a direct connection to the customer will help you get a better idea of what you need to do to improve your relationships and how you can make your company and products better overall. Of course, this doesn’t mean taking every idea that each customer has. However, when there seems to be a consensus in certain areas, it is worth exploring.

Do You Need to Expand?

As your business is growing, you also have to determine whether you will be able to meet your growth plans within the existing market, or if you need to expand into a new market.

To make sure you are doing this right, you need to estimate the size of your addressable market.

Do you have enough room to grow? Who are you taking market share from and are you positioned to compete and win?

Common moves that companies make to grow in their existing market include:

• Adding new product features
• Offering bundled services that address adjacent customer needs
• Establishing partnerships with companies that have a complementary capability
• Incrementally developing new products based on the customer insights that you’re continuously monitoring

All of these strategies and others can be used to help solve more problems for your customers, create more value and make it easy for customers to choose you rather than the competition.

If you already have a high market share in your current market or are swimming in a sea of competitors making it costly to differentiate and compete, then you should look at opportunities to expand your addressable market.

• Are there similar customers with common needs that you can meet in a new geography?
• Is there a demographic that is underserved with the products and services you provide?

It’s easier than ever today to reach new customers through digital channels, local partnerships and brand extensions. Look beyond your current customers for opportunities to leverage your unique capability and evaluate the most effective channel to reach them to open up new growth opportunities.

Continue to Build the Connection

It is important to remember that becoming a part of your customers’ lives and remaining important to them is not something that you can do once and forget about. This is an ongoing part of your business and it will inform your marketing, the products you develop, your customer service, the content you create and so much more. Be sure to treat it with the importance it deserves.

A great perspective on how to think about your customers and the “job to be done” was developed by the late Clayton Christensen. An easy way to apply this approach is found in Denise Lee Yohn’s article “Clay Christensen’s Jobs To Be Done Innovation Theory Challenges Common Innovation And Marketing Methods”.

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Eric Strafel is the founder of SUMMi7, focused on improving business and society by creating opportunities for underrepresented communities. For more than 25 years, the former corporate CEO and Fortune 500 executive has dedicated himself to building forward-thinking teams and scaling innovation to create transformational organizations that thrive in an increasingly entrepreneurial and purpose-driven world.?

His recent leadership roles include Vice President of Strategy and Market Development for Boeing Global Services and President/CEO of Aviall, where he led the creation of the framework for Aviall’s 20/20 vision for future growth. Prior to joining Aviall, Eric was Vice President of Supply Chain Management for L3 Communications, one of the largest defense companies in the U.S. He is also a certified Six Sigma Black Belt, certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and APICS Certified in Production and Inventory Management (CPIM).?

With years of experience as a leader in enterprise businesses, Eric is passionate about helping small and midsize companies grow profits and scale with purpose while leveraging their strengths, maintaining their values and harmonizing all of life’s pursuits. He is on a mission to share collaborative leadership strategies and create opportunities for a more human-centric and inclusive planet.?

Eric has an upcoming book release in fall 2021 entitled The Frontline CEO to assist leaders in transforming their businesses to embrace and manage change while empowering their teams to fulfill their purpose. He holds an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University and a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from Binghamton University. Eric sits on the Board of Directors of the Texas Diversity Council and the Irving Chamber of Commerce. He is an active and engaged father and husband living in Texas with his wife and three children. Eric enjoys the outdoors, staying fit and maintaining a wellness mindset. A world traveler with a global perspective, he has travelled across six continents both personally and professionally.

SUMMi7 supports small and midsize businesses to grow and scale with purpose. Learn more about the Business Scaling Method and Join a Cohort.

Eric's book, The Frontline CEO, Turn Employees into Decision Makers Who Innovate Solutions, Win Customers, and Boost Profits launches Sept. 7, 2021 and is available for pre-order.