How To Grow Your Business By Following Your Customers

Are you struggling to make meaningful connections with your audience and are you struggling to secure consistent sales? Perhaps something feels a little bit disconnected, but you can’t quite put your finger on what that missing link is!

When we don’t understand the people that we’re coming into contact with within our business we tend to end up making assumptions about who they are. And when we make assumptions about who they are, we could end up making costly mistakes and you guessed it, we could be reaching out to them with messaging that’s never gonna hit that sweet spot no matter how hard we try.

I’m my blog posts for the next few weeks I'm going to be taking you on a deeper dive into how you can create much stronger connections by understanding your customers and audiences. And you know what that’s going to do right? It’s going to increase your chances of building know, like and trust AND sell without selling!

I’m Lor Bradley, a business strategist and mentor and I’ve started, grown and scaled businesses for myself and other entrepreneurs for almost thirty years. And in my videos I’m going to show you how to grow your business so you can escape the feast or famine trap and grow your income consistently. OK, so let’s get going!

Today, I’m going to talk about understanding your audience and your ideal paying customers by tapping into who THEY are following. So, why do you want to be tapping into your target paying customers? Well it’s going to get you laser focused on who you are serving, and why those particular people want to invest in you, over anyone else.

So, if you know your ideal paying customer inside out, the more likely you will be to offer the things they’re looking for and its going to feel seamless, like your offerings are the obvious choice. And one of the ways we can tap into the hearts and minds of our audience and our ideal paying customers is to dig deep into understanding who they follow, because you can learn so much about your ideal paying customer this way. 

Ok, lets dig into this!

Number 1: What Customer Pain Points Do You Solve?

And the first thing you want to do is work out what problems your potential customers are facing and REALLY double down on understanding exactly that. I like to call it walking in my ideal paying customers shoes and here I will make it my goal to experience their problems, their frustrations, what they love and what they feel passionate about. So, I will try to understand how they are thinking and feeling, and then build real examples of customer pain points.

Next, I’ll take plenty of time to work out exactly how I can be the answer to their problem and create my solution that solves that problem, or that ‘need’ for them. And what also helps me, is to look at WHO these people with this problem, or this ‘need’ are following. And I do that because my customers follow who they follow because those businesses, or those individuals will be giving my would-be customers the types of answers, or the types of support that they’re looking for.

And it’s important to understand exactly what their ‘need’ is that is being currently being fulfilled by the people they follow. And I can’t tell you enough how valuable doing this type of research is!

Number 2: Know Your Competition

Ok, when you know who your ideal customers are following it’ll also give you some amazing insights into who your competitors are. Now, I know many of you feel really uncomfortable talking about your competition but when you understand who else is operating within your niche market you can better understand HOW you are different. And tapping into THAT difference will become one of your powerful secret selling sauces.

I’m not going to go into detail on competitors in this video, but my point is when you better understand who is popular in your niche marketplace and figure out ways to set yourself apart from your competitors, you then put yourself miles ahead. When you commit the time to dig into this, you will discover even more of your own strengths.

So, finding out which competitors your audience and customers are following not only helps you know where you are DIFFERENT but where you are STRONG. And you may find a way to plug a gap in the market that no one else is covering!

Number 3: Where Are My Customers Hanging Out?

And this is probably my most asked question and one fast way to find where they hang out is by understanding who the influencers are in your marketplace because you can learn so much about these influencers and what it is they are doing that makes your potential customers follow them.

And then, you guessed it, you go back to number two and work out how you are different. By researching influencers, you can learn a lot about what their audience likes. You can discover the audience’s hobbies, interests, the questions they’re asking in that influencers community and you can tap into understand the content they’re consuming in their spare time.

Just don’t become a stalker!

Number 4: Know Your Ideal Customers Buying Behaviour

So, what do I mean by this? 

Well, your potential customers mindset and approach to making that decision to commit to buy depends on the type of products they’re going to buy. And an example of this is, you might not give it a second thought to popping into your local supermarket to buy toilet roll, but, say you want to buy a new phone. You’ll have a completely different buying behaviour. And I’m guessing you’ll research the specs of the phones, you’ll weigh up the costs, the kudos of owning a particular brand of phone and so on.  

So, when you know the buying behaviour of your own ideal paying customers then it’ll be much easier to present what you have to offer in a way that connects with them and makes their decision-making process a no brainer. And if you go back to my previous suggestions, its highly likely they’re following the influencers that they are also buying from so take a look to see what messaging that influencer is using and look at the customer buying behaviours.

Now, you’re not doing this to copy them, remember this is to understand where you can be different and tap into the mindsets of those people that you would like to buy from you!

So, How Do We Do This And Actually Find Out Who Our Audience Is Following?

Well, the most obvious place to start is social media and a quick look at any of your followers’ profiles will show you what other businesses, or lifestyles choices they enjoy. If it’s appropriate you could also follow your ideal paying customers and see what they are posting. This is also really easy to do if they are also a business owner. 

Another way to do this is just by going and asking them who they admire and who they follow. Most people will be really happy to tell you. Or even ask who inspires them on a post in your community. I often ask for feedback or insights, and because people know I’m always looking to improve or provide even more value, they’re happy to help me out.  Another great way to gain insights from them is by setting up a feedback session every quarter, it’s a great way to tap into their daily lives and provide even more value.

So, all these incredible insights you’re collecting will directly feed into your ideal paying customer profile because it’s going to help you to tap into your audiences wants, their preferences and what they need. And don’t forget, this a well worthy exercise because you are going to find out so much about yourself, your business and how you stand out in a marketplace surrounded by competitors!

Keep your research organised and keep coming back to it on a regular basis. Use your research as the basis for all your messaging, your product development and your ongoing brand development. You could always go one step further and use this research as a way of connecting with influencers and forming new collaborations!

There are so many benefits to doing this but one of the real bonuses is it will build your credibility and authority in front of your ideal customers and increase your reach across two audiences!

So, knowing who your customers are and who they follow is an absolutely brilliant way to grow your business because when you become seamless in how you understand and connect with your ideal paying customers, you will sell more, and your business will grow much faster.