Guaranteeing Success by Knowing Your Customer

The success that comes to any business is a direct result of finding people that want to buy from you. If this sounds simple, it’s just the “Know your customer” rule and nothing more.

Finding your ideal customer may take a little research but the fact is the foundation of your success is going to be built off of a research process that defines and locates your potential customers. If you’re running an online business it’s also going to help them find you on search engines like Google Yahoo, and Bing.  Defining your customer will in turn define your ultimate niche, the sales copy you use, and how you market your wares.

Staying with the online business example, let’s use weight loss as the generic topic for where you’ll be starting an online business. Within that topic there exists a wide variety of sub and micro niches where plenty of demand exists without the heavy competition that typically comes with the broader niches in weight loss like “lose weight”.

Having a sense of urgency is a great way to find people who are ready to buy. It seems that there is always a theme in weight loss that carries some kind of urgency that will make people feel that they need to buy a product now, including:

Lose that weight before bikini season
Lose the holiday weight
Lose weight before a wedding/reunion/vacation

There is also an element of vanity in this niche so appealing to that can enhance your sales copy as well. By knowing your client you could select keywords that serve as hot button issues which will attract them to your product. If you, for example, were to focus on losing some weight before going on spring break you could set your marketing to push the buttons of exactly those people that are heading to a tropical locale for their vacation. Does that define everyone that wants to lose weight? It absolutely doesn’t, but it narrows your message to the point where your message can be seen by a motivated audience.

With these definitions, you could further refine your ideal client and their hot button issues so that you can position your product as the perfect solution for their problem. You’re not going to sell a weight loss product to everyone, but if you don’t know who your customer is, chances are you’ll be marketing to the wrong audience. Starting any business with a clear definition of your ideal customer will allow you to focus only on them. The reward is that you’ll make more money and make it faster.