Just How Well Do You Know Your Market?

One of the greatest competitive advantages you will ever have comes from developing a high-trust relationship with your clients. Let me illustrate with the client continuum:

The goal of any business is to get your suspects to ultimately become your evangelists.

My objective as a marketer is to move them from left to right, from suspect, to prospect, to customer, to evangelist.

You start with a suspect, a total stranger who doesn’t know, like, or trust you. They are not on your opt-in list.

A suspect becomes a prospect once they join your opt-in list. They haven’t bought yet, but they opted-in. And, they opted-in within the last 365 days.

If a prospects hasn’t opted-in in the last year, they aren’t a prospect, they are a suspect. Do see that it’s possible for them to fall back on the continuum?

A customer is someone who has paid you $1or more within the last 365 days. If they paid you $1 dollar on your website, on a teleseminar, or in your store, they are a customer. If it’s been a year since they purchased, they are a prospect.

If you are a doctor, your customer is a patient. If you are a mentor or a coach like me, he or she would be your client.

What is an evangelist? An evangelist is the 20% of your customers responsible for 80% of your revenue.

Along this continuum, each one of these individuals can be identified by certain characteristics. Do you know what they are? The effectiveness of your marketing goes up exponentially the more aware you are of those who make up your market.

The questions you ask in your market research should reveal the defining characteristics that allow you to refine your marketing message so that it becomes razor sharp. The better you are at getting and keeping the pulse of your market, and crafting offers that meet their needs, wants, and desires…and eliminate their pain and their fears, the more profitable you will become.

Here are a few of the most basic questions that you want to ask your market:

1. When it comes to (your area of expertise), what is the single most important question you would like to ask me?
2. When it comes to (your area of expertise) what is the single most important reason that you like doing business with me (or my company)?
3. When it comes to (your area of expertise), is there anything that you can identify that would help you that we are not currently doing?
4. If you were talking to a friend or a colleague about our products (or services), would you recommend us? and why?
5. What is your greatest challenge as it relates to (your area of expertise)?

Your next step is to keep track of those answers and see how they impact your existing suite of products and services. When done on a consistent basis, you will always have the pulse of where your market is, and how you can best serve them. Just taking these steps will separate you from many of the players in your industry.

If you need any assistance setting up your market research initiative, contact us so that we can get an idea of your objectives to see if we are best suited to service your need.