[00:00:00] Do you ever feel a little lost when it comes to knowing where to market your business or what message to share in an ad? You feel like you should be doing something more with marketing, but sometimes you just let the ad rep handle it because you feel overwhelmed by running your daily operations and you don't know the answer to what and where to market. Today, we are going to unlock success in your business by finding an easy path forward and a quick win for marketing with confidence.
[00:00:32] Who is your target customer? This is the critical question your business must answer or face failure.
[00:00:45] Welcome to the small business Hustle, the podcast where we dive into the challenges and triumphs of running a small business in small town America. I'm your host, Molly B. A serial entrepreneur, husky puppy mom, and passionate lover of all things business. Whether you're just starting out or looking to take your business to the next level, you're in the right place. So let's get down to business and hustle together.
[00:01:15] Thank you so much for joining me. On today's episode, we are going to be talking about who is your target? Quote, customer.
[00:01:23] This is the critical question your business must answer or face failure. And listen, guys, I don't mean for this to be a doom and gloom type of question or an episode title, but at the end of the day, if you don't even know who you are trying to sell your product or service to, the path to failure has kind of going to be in front of you if you don't course correct.
[00:01:46] All right, so before we dive into today's episode, we have to do a quote. So here we are today with Dave McClure, 500 startups co founder, who said, a startup is a company that is confused about, number one, what its product is, number two, who its customers are, and number three, how to make money.
[00:02:12] In today's episode, we aren't going to be talking as much about your product or service. Most of you probably already have that all nailed down. So we're going to dive a little deeper into this customer stuff. A lot of times I think that people maybe feel like they know the answers to this, but we're going to dive in a little bit deeper today and see if we can maybe find some spots where you can improve and make your business even better. So when we say, what do we mean by who is my customer? So what? What is that? Who is my customer? You'll find some business owners have a hard time with this question because they want to tell you who might have currently be shopping. And when we talk about customers, we talk about our target audience. We don't mean who is currently shopping, but who should be currently shopping. One of the main problems businesses make is not knowing who they are trying to sell a product or service to.
[00:03:14] Who is your ideal customer? The customer that is going to make you be successful. Can you answer that question or are you just telling me who is currently coming in? And maybe you're floundering.
[00:03:28] All your critical decisions are tied to being able to properly define who your target customer is. Every decision and every answer can be found. Once we clearly define our target customer, how do we figure out who our target customer is? That is a great question. And let me answer that. We build a customer avatar profile, or some people call this a customer Persona. At the end of the day, I use them interchangeably. You could get into the weeds about defining them separately. I usually tend to go for customer avatar, but even when you talk about, like, for example, podcasting, they're going to call that your listener avatar. So who's listening? It doesn't matter what name you give that, it's who is going to be consuming this content, who is going to be buying my product, who is going to need my service.
[00:04:26] What we call that is our customer avatar or our customer Persona. So how do we do this? Is that we basically, this is a very valuable exercise to create a detailed customer avatar that helps businesses better understand their ideal customers. A customer avatar is a fictional representation of a typical customer. Let's go over a few examples.
[00:04:52] Things like demographics, interests, and behaviors. We want to ask questions about age, gender, location, income, family situation, and lifestyle. But that's not all. We also want to know about their values, their interests, and their hobbies.
[00:05:15] We also need to understand the emotional factors that influence their buying decisions. And even naming your customer avatar can help you craft a message directly tailored to their needs.
[00:05:29] All right. Once you have gathered all the information you can about your ideal customer, that customer avatar, what do you do with it? Okay, this is a great question. I gathered all of this. I got this all figured out. I did all these things. But what, what and what? All right, think about your customer. I want you to think about their daily life. When do they get up? What do they do when they get up? What tasks or activities do they engage in throughout their day? Where and how do they get their information?
[00:06:01] Do they listen to radio podcasts? Watch social media shorts? Read a newspaper? Do they watch the news on tv or on an app?
[00:06:15] Do they see billboards or led displays on their commute? Think about all the things your customer avatar relates to throughout their day, their week and their month.
[00:06:28] With all this detail, businesses can use this to make decisions about marketing and where to place advertising. Now you can easily answer whether you should advertise in the newspaper. On Google, you can determine if it would be best to advertise on the radio during a local sports broadcast or spend that money advertising on Instagram.
[00:06:53] An example if your audience consists of active families with children, you might find advertising at a Little League sports field is a good use of your advertising dollars.
[00:07:06] Even perhaps a a school PTO event might be a great option for your business.
[00:07:13] Now we need to know what we are going to say.
[00:07:19] What is the message you will share when you create an ad? What marketing message do you want to convey? The way you determine that is to craft a positioning statement.
[00:07:33] A positioning statement is a description of your product or service that explains how it serves your target audience. Marketing and sales teams use this statement to guide their messages and make sure all communication is consistent. When you're in a small business, that's you.
[00:07:52] So you are now going to take that information and you're going to craft a great message, a great positioning statement on where you want to position yourself in the marketplace.
[00:08:04] I'm going to give you an example from Etsy. They say we help our community of sellers turn their ideas into successful businesses. It's a really loaded sentence. So their target audience is this community of sellers. And I'm sure that behind the scenes they have even more detail about that, but they're not going to share that as much publicly that's accessible to us. And then what they're doing is that community of sellers, they're going to turn that community of sellers ideas into successful businesses. So what they're saying is that their customers pain point here is that they need to turn these ideas into successful businesses. And so the way that they're going to do that is the next sentence which says, our platform connects them with millions of buyers looking for an alternative, something special, with a human touch for those moments in life that deserve imagination. So that's a really great example of like, okay, now, every time we're going to make some sort of an ad, does it match back to this? Does it link back to this in any way? Can we pull out and say we're meeting these guidelines?
[00:09:16] All right, you might ask, what if I have a current audience? What are some ways I can identify these traits with my current customers besides just guessing or making assumptions?
[00:09:30] I would suggest that you start by engaging with your audience through direct conversations, emails, interviews, or possibly even through social media posts.
[00:09:42] When you have someone doing business with you, find a way to ask them how they found out about your business, what prompted them to select you. Sometimes it can be awkward at first, but you will find a conversation style that will work best for you. I struggled with this so much. My husband could ask very directly to our customers and it sounded so natural and it just fit. But when I did it in the same way, it just felt so uncomfortable and I had to work on coming up with something that was natural for me and that fit my personality style, which is completely different than what he uses that works for him. And so you might have to flirt with a couple different things just to get yourself comfortable. But once you do, the wealth of information is fascinating. So when you ask these questions, not only will customers generally tell you why they picked your business, they will likely explain the problem that they were trying to solve.
[00:10:47] This is invaluable information. Now you can craft messages around this information.
[00:10:54] Now you can also gain qualitative insights into their needs and expectations.
[00:11:00] Another way to do this is to survey your audience. So you can use surveys or feedback forms to gather insights directly from your audience.
[00:11:09] You can also ask questions about preferences, challenges and buying habits.
[00:11:15] Another thing that you will want to do is evaluate customer feedback.
[00:11:20] Pay attention to customer reviews and feedback. Have you checked review sites for information about your company?
[00:11:27] Yes. I will tell you right off the bat, most negative reviews can be infuriating. But take the most constructive approach possible and see if you can gain a new offering by solving the problem they are reporting to have had. Perhaps you just need to implement a new process in your business to prevent this from happening in the future. But better yet, maybe you can offer a new product or service that not only would increase your reach and your revenue, but it's going to solve this problem that the customer is complaining about. You know, I hear people say things like, well, we're not a bank when it comes to, you know, having an ATM. Well, is this a common problem in your area? Maybe you need to make your ATM more prominent, you know, and not the greatest example, but it is an example to really think about. Sometimes business owners get a little bit stuck in a rut and so that can be something where you can say, well, wait, how can I solve this problem? What other option is there?
[00:12:26] Now you can utilize positive feedback to create marketing messages, understand what customers appreciate and where improvements are needed. So now you can also utilize the positive feedback or the positive reviews to create marketing messages. So examples might be customers stating that you give personalized wardrobe suggestions that help them feel confident. This is a marketing message you want to share. So an example of that might be want to feel confident in your style? Schedule a one on one wardrobe consultation with one of our experts that sounds and reads just like an ad. So if you go through those positive reviews, you might be able to find something that can be just really beneficial for positioning and marketing your business. And not only is it gold, it's something that someone said about you, so it feels so much easier to repeat than something that you just pulled out and said, this is what I want people to think. Like, this is an example of how they actually do think about your business. I'm gonna throw out another example.
[00:13:36] Create a one of a kind gift basket with our gifting specialists. So these types of messages will help redirect the messaging of come buy our gifts, come buy our clothes. We have things to buy to a solution tailored to your customers pain points. So now instead we're saying you need a gift and we have gifting specialists that will help you come up with a one of a kind gift. So instead of just saying like, we've got lots of gifts, come buy them. You have tailored that message and you've really targeted that same thing with the wardrobe. If you've got clothes, you know, maybe you've got a really great ability to style people, and that is going to be a message that you're going to want to share. Because when we're buying clothes, we're not just solving the problem of wearing clothes. Especially most of our business owners are going to have boutique style and really just cute pieces and cute looks. And so those customers don't want to just buy the basics so that their body is covered. They want to express themselves. They want to express that style.
[00:14:49] They want to feel confident. They want to look their best. Those are the types of marketing messages that you need to share. And that's how you set yourself apart from some of these other places that essentially they all sell clothes in that competitor space. But man, is there not a big difference between them, right? Like, there's so much variety in that, that category.
[00:15:12] All right, so these types of messages, when they redirect, you're going to be focusing on those customers pain points. So to position our marketing efforts, we want to focus on the pain points that our customers have and more specifically, the solution to those pain points.
[00:15:31] Other ways we can define a customer's pain point, basically understanding the challenges and problems your target customers face throughout that daily journey that we crafted earlier we thought about what are they doing throughout the month, the day? Where's their week? How are they, you know, how are they getting through that? And what challenges are they facing? And so now we're going to position our product or service as a solution to these issues.
[00:16:02] Ready to take today's lessons to the next level? I've created a worksheet that goes hand in hand with this episode and it's available for download now. Just visit our fan
[email protected] smallbusinesshustle to get your copy. While you're there, feel free to send me a message or record a voice note. I'd love to hear how you're applying these tips to your own business and your insights might just be featured in a future episode.
[00:16:31] After we figured out everything we could about our customer, we really defined who they are. Maybe we even defined a secondary customer target. We talked about their pain points and how we're going to market and position that marketing statement. So we know who we're going to say this to. We know what we're going to say to them. There's one more thing that I want to talk to you about today that is kind of a final detail. So we're going to look at this final detail that can propel you forward. And this is to look for gaps and underserved customers that your competitors are missing.
[00:17:07] The way you do this is by completing a competitor analysis. I like to call this a product positioning table. Alright? So if you picture this table along the columns, you will put all of your competitors or overlapping businesses. Maybe they don't, they aren't a direct competitor, but they, they do some services or some things that overlap with your business. So you put those all across the top and then along the rows you can put all the products or services that you might offer or you're considering offering. Maybe you are going to do the service, might be like different hours. Maybe you want to offer different hours. Maybe you're going to bring in in a new product.
[00:17:48] Maybe you're going to offer a new service, whatever that may be. You're going to put those all down along the side.
[00:17:55] And now you're going to fill in the table based on things your competitors offer or don't offer. And once you do this, gaps in the table will emerge where competitors aren't offering these products or services. And these gaps are a great place to position yourself as the only or the best in a category. So an example of this when I completed this task is that I put down really specific things like a mature skincare product. So not something for, you know, teenagers, not an acne product, but something for mature faces. Skincare line, skincare products, moisturizers, etcetera. I put in makeup. So I put in information about makeup and things. Then I also put in, you know, I put in, like, the hours I had and other things. And I found some of the most fascinating information when I got really specific. And especially when you are not the direct customer of those specific products, sometimes you don't notice the gaps. And what I mean by that is maybe you always buy the same skincare product and, you know, the place that has the skincare product you use. But now you're thinking about offering more products. Products. And so you can put those products and look at it from that point of view, not from the customer point of view, but from an analysis point of view. And when you do that, you can find fascinating things. And what I learned in my town is the place that had the best overall selection of skincare products that was not geared towards a teenager, you know, an acne type product. The best selection in our town was the grocery store. It out beat the dollar store because they don't really try to serve those customers who want higher end or better quality skincare products. They focus on. They really focus on acne or kind of some random off brands. They just didn't have a great selection. And that was just fascinating to me because I would have never, ever told you that the. That the grocery store in our town was going to beat out the dollar store. I mean, that was just fascinating. And so then I felt more confident spending money and bringing in brands like Olay and Burt's bees. And, you know, I brought in Garnier and just L'Oreal and all of those brands because I knew that I could be the best in that category. And my skincare did great. My skincare was a great category for me. And it's because I spent the time going around and really evaluating what these other stores had to offer and figured out there was not a good solution in our town for some of those things. All right, thank you so much for joining me today. I really hope that this episode helped you figure out, you know, take some time, you're going to sit down, scratch out, who is that target customer? Who are you trying to sell your products to? Who is the ideal person that's going to make your business a success? And where can you find more of them so you can spend those advertising dollars the smartest way possible to make sure that you get the biggest bang for your marketing buck. And now, once you know who your customer is and you know where to go find them, now you're gonna also know what to say to them because you figured out how to position your marketing statement so that you're going to be solving their problem. You're not just going to say, hey, I sell things. You're going to be thinking about that emotional connection to them, how they're making those buying decisions. You're going to be thinking about, you know, what? What problem am I solving for them? And it's what can I do for you, not what you can do for me. And when you do that in your marketing, it's going to translate so much better across to your customer. And once you're done with all of that, the other thing that you can do to really scale up your business is to do that product positioning table and figure out are there any gaps and places where you can add on to your business that will really strengthen your offering and help make those target customers even more loyal to your business. All right, thanks so much and I hope you have a fantastic day. I'm always looking to connect with fellow entrepreneurs. If you've got questions, feedback or just want to share your own hustle story, reach out on our fan
[email protected]. smallbusinesshustle whether you prefer typing out a message or recording one, I'm excited to hear from you and to learn more about your journey. Your insights might just be featured in a future episode.
[00:22:44] Thanks for joining me on this episode of the Small Business Hustle. I hope you found some valuable insights and inspiration to fuel your entrepreneurial journey. Don't forget to follow and leave a review. It does help the show and if you're looking for more resources, be sure to check out the companion worksheet download available with this season. Until next time, keep hustling and I'll see you in the next episode.
