Did you learn marketing when it was all about promoting your product? If you showed your ad enough it become top of mind and customers purchased. Guess what? Marketing has changed and it is no longer about pushing product. Instead we have to give customers what they want and to do that we have to know what they want. Before we can create social media campaigns or direct mail pieces we need to understand the customer. What problem do they have that we can solve?

Many times customers want to save money, increase income, become more well known, be more attractive, or have fancier lifestyle. So we need to figure out the problem we are solving and what benefit we are providing. In any industry there are a myriad of problems you can address so to start off let’s see what people are complaining about, discussing, or trying to achieve.

How to Gain Customer Insights

There are several ways you can gain customer insights if you are a small business without a big budget.

Talk to your customers. If you are an existing business speak with past clients, potential clients and people who did not buy. What are their goals, pain points or problems?
Comb the internet for articles, posts, and comments around your industry to see what people are talking about. Check out groups and communities as well. Can you find any major pain points?
Use simple and inexpensive tools. Reddit, Trends.Google, Talkwalker, Google Alerts, Buzzsumo, Hashtagify.me are all useful in figuring out some key gripes, problems, searches, and talking points.

Here is a link to some more tools

https://marketingland.com/6-of-the-best-social-listening-tools-for-2019-249953

What Else Can You Learn?

Pretend you are a journalist and are writing a story. You will need the who, what, when, why and how. These are the same questions you will need answered about your customer. Think about demographics, behavior, and psychographics. Be able to discuss what platforms they hang out in, age group, occasions for purchasing, do they buy in large quantities, what makes them buy, how long is the buying cycle, what books or magazines do they read, where did they go to school, what do they do for fun, are they looking for stability and safety in life or do they want to achieve some ultimate dream?

Suppose you are a fitness trainer you might learn that people find working out boring and see no results. If you are a wedding planner you might find that many people think weddings are too expensive and require too much time to plan. If you are a realtor you might find that people don’t understand why agents get paid so much and find the process of buying a home stressful. With this info in hand you are much better equipped to help people.

Once you have gathered all this insight it is time to think about how you can solve their problems. How does what you offer fit into what they want? This is the most important part of your marketing. You are in the business of solving customer problems now. Remember it is no longer about pushing product.

Once you have identified the problem you are going to help them solve and you know how you can help them, then you can start formulating messages. More on that another time.

Liz Kohler

Marketing Strategy Consultant
Kohlermarketing.com