Understanding Your Customer

Restored from the Empower Network archive (2011–2017), lightly edited to meet our current advertising standards. Views are the original author’s.

Knowing your customer is arguably the best way to get them to trust you and purchase from you.  One of the most common mistakes businesses make is to not understand who their customer is.  You can’t just market to the world.  It would be like trying to sell a vacuum cleaner to people who have hardwood floors.  Promoting to a customer or niche you don’t understand is a waste of valuable time and resources.  You cannot sell people on what you “think” they want but on what they actually are looking for. 

Customers typically go through three phases before will they actually purchase your product or service.  Understanding these phases will help you to communicate better with your potential customer.  You wouldn’t want to hard sell a customer who is in the first phase.  You would lose them instantly.

Customer Facts

First, let’s review some facts about our customers.

♦  People rarely buy on their first contact with your product or service. They don’t know you and probably have never heard of your product or service.

♦  It typically takes people 7 times being exposed to your product or service before they will consider purchasing. They need time to get a feel for you, your credibility, and your product or service.

♦  People do not buy from people they do not trust. Gaining their trust should be your number one focus.  People buy people, plain and simple.  They will not buy a product or service from someone they do not like or trust.

♦  People buy products or services that will be beneficial to them in some way. It is your job to tell them what that way is.  Chances are they do not understand your product or service and its benefits right away, so you will need to educate them.  The better you do that, the easier it will be for them to make a decision to purchase.

♦  People can see through scammy sales techniques better than ever. It will turn them off immediately if they believe you are using some kind of scammy technique.

♦  People have an internet that enables them easy access to find product reviews and information. All they need to do is Google something or go to social media and find out about your product or service. 

Phase 1 – Research 

Most people will do research on a product or service that they are actually thinking of purchasing.  They are hungry for any kind of information.  And I hate to say it, but negative reviews will catch their eye and change their decision faster than any positive review.  One negative comment with the dreaded word “scam” and they are gone forever.  People in this phase are looking for negative reviews, a reason why not to purchase something.  It is your job to help them see the positive outweighs any kind of negative. 

Some ways research is done is by social media, (i.e. Twitter, Facebook or Google +), a Google, Bing or Yahoo search, news websites, blogs, contact with someone who has used the product or service in the past or even a celebrity endorsement.  People naturally get online as instinct nowadays.  It is the “information highway”.  There are reviews on the internet for practically any product or service available to consumers.

The best point of contact through this phase is to get their email address to send them emails to build trust.  You can offer them a free report which reviews different brands of the product or service you are offering or a bonus in exchange for their email address.  You can also ask them to follow you on social media.  The more contact you have with them, as long as you are not spammy, the more you can build credibility.  It also exposes them to your product or service and perhaps gives them valuable information.  You may be able to negate the “scam” word at this point if your information is valuable and relevant enough to encourage a positive reaction.

Phase 2 – Decision

Approximately one-third of people know instantly whether they are going to make a purchase or not.  If they have decided they will not purchase, they move on without entering their email address, and that’s perfectly fine.  You do not want people on your list who are not going to purchase from you.

One-third of people have done their research at this point and know whether they are going to make a purchase, and one-third of people may be on the fence in this phase, not quite sure which product brand or service they will purchase.  This is the best phase to set yourself up as an authority in the product or service arena and hit them with a powerful review. 

Say for example you are selling Dyson vacuum cleaners.  Doing product reviews on the other brands and bringing them around to why Dyson is a better choice would be very helpful to your customer.  Use that to downplay your competition. 

Phase 3 – Action Phase

At this point you either have them or you don’t.  If your product reviews, email drips, and credibility have been successful, you have yourself a new customer.  It is also very hard at this stage to convince them to purchase if they have not done so already. 

The best approach now would be to manually walk them through the purchase process.  Pointing them to the product they are looking to buy, giving them a call to action. 

Reaching Your Customer

Think about the last purchase you made (or didn’t make).  Did you do research?  Where?  How?  At what point did you purchase, the day you started research or a few days later?  Were you exposed to both positive and negative reviews?  Which one swayed your decision?  Why?  Was price an issue?  Answering these questions for yourself will help you understand your customer better through the different phases.  I’m sure you followed many of the same steps they follow when deciding to purchase or not.

Finding Your Customer 

Once you know your customer or niche, how do you find them?  Ask yourself what keywords they will be searching to find your product or service.  Knowing the keywords will enable you to target your customer in the right phase we discussed above. 

If you are targeting someone who wants to purchase a vacuum cleaner and you use the keywords “vacuum cleaner”, you are targeting them in the wrong phase.  They are just beginning to do research on vacuum cleaners rather than ready to purchase one.  You need to get to more targeted keywords. 

Instead of using the broad keyword phrase “vacuum cleaner”, you can target them in more specific terms like “where do I buy Dyson vacuum cleaner” or “purchase high suction vacuum cleaner”.  This is where you want to get very specific because you want to target them closest to their Action Phase.  This is also the best place for them to find your review on the internet discussing the other brands and comparing them to yours.

Learning how to understand your customers in the different purchasing phases will help you target them more directly.  I hope this blog helped you do just that.