‹ Back

 

Who is your real customer?

 

 

~By Walter W. Muzangaza

 

One of the most common mistakes new business owners make is to try and sell their services to everyone and many times this strategy backfires more than it succeeds.

 

Yes you may have a business or are thinking about starting one soon,but have you thought about who you are selling to or will soon be selling to? 

 

Many new business owners at the prospect of having an idea for a needed product or service, get excited and obsess over their business model. Inside their minds there is one single minded goal. Sell my product to as many people as possible and make lots of profit.

 

Often times they are very informed about who their suppliers are. They have a solid grounding of the kind of activities that their business is supposed to do. However, the idea of a customer identity, defining characteristics of what their customer looks like, behaves like, where they are likely to be found etc, never really crosses their mind. The rosy unstructured approach they hope will work is to market to everyone and this often fails more than it succeeds.

 

Your marketing needs to be effective, efficient & precise.

 

Your Business Depends on Your Customer

 

Marketing to people who are not interested in your product or who do not have any capacity to buy or influence the decision to buy is a waste of time, money & energy. Imagine marketing high-end expensive jewellery to young primary school students that neither wear the jewellery nor have capacity to buy or influence the decision to buy your products. Your business depends on your customer buying, and it stands to reason that you must at least invest in trying to define the identity of the person who is likely to buy from you.

 

If you market to the right customers, they will appreciate it, buy and are likely to recommend your product or services to others that may also be potential customers. Build your customer profile with the template below.