Tools you can use to Uncover Customer Needs

March 21, 2012


Finding and serving the “right” customers is the most important step you can take to improve your sales. Many small business owners feel that the task is easier said than done. As a result, they fail to align their business with the right customer segment. Even when they do attempt to do it they either go about finding the customer needs in ad-hoc fashion or they use wrong tools to segment the customer base.
As we have noted earlier, we firmly believe that segmenting the customers based on their needs as opposed to demographics or location can improve your sales significantly. But how do you go about finding what customers really need and want?
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How to Improve Sales 5X by Focusing on Customer Needs

March 17, 2012


In the previous post we discussed how you can find the “right” customers for your business. By segmenting your customers based on their needs you can not only identify the customers that best fit the value your business provides, but also it provides you the action plan to target those customers. This is one, and most important, reason why we prefer to segment and target customer based on their needs. Once you have identified the “right” customer base you don’t need to spend extra effort to attract them to your business.
So, how do you go about finding the customer needs? While there are several approaches you can take to find out what customers are looking for, you can start with a set of attributes that are universally valued by various customer segments. These attributes give you a good starting point towards the path of finding right customer base.
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How can you Find the “Right” Customers for your Business?

March 13, 2012


One of the biggest mistakes you can make as small business owners is try to serve all customers who walk in to your business equally. We showed in an earlier post that not all customers are created equal. It is your responsibility to find the customers that are “right” for your business. Many business owners, however, struggle to find these “right” customers. They either go about finding them in an ad-hoc fashion or not worry about it at all. This could be a mistake.
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7-Step Action Plan to Deal with Negative Publicity on Social Media

March 6, 2012


For small business owners dealing with social media is equivalent to a relationship with a spouse or girlfriend. You cannot live without it nor can you (sometimes) live with it! Just like the other relationship, you still have to deal with the situation, whether you like it or not. Even if you do not want actively use social media for business marketing, you have to stay engaged to make sure your business image is not being tarnished, which can hurt your business.
You can overcome your social media fears with the 3-step approach we described earlier. We also showed best practices you can use to get the most out of social media. In this post we will show how you can deal with negative comments customers may post about your business on social media.
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Social Media Best Practices for Small Business Owners

February 28, 2012


For many small business owners getting on the bandwagon of social media is a novel and scary experience. They recognize that they cannot avoid it because that’s where their current and potential customers are. But at the same time they are scared due to lack of knowledge and experience. We showed 3-step approach to overcome social media fears in the earlier post. In this post we will show how you can get the most out of social media by following the best practices.
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Overcome Social Media Fears with 3-step Approach

February 22, 2012


Depending on whom you ask social media phenomenon of the last few years has either been a great boon to small business owners or a complete nightmare. No matter which side of the fence you are on, one thing is certain – small business owners can no longer ignore social media these days. Number of savvy owners has been using social media in innovative ways to improve different aspects of their business leading to higher sales and improved profit. Despite this fact, there are some who are fearful of delving into social media due to lack of knowledge or for fear of getting into quagmire.
Fear no more, friends!! The 3-step approach we have described below will navigate you through the challenging road to conquer the social media battle. We do not promise that you will become next Mark Zuckerberg with this approach, but we do believe that you will be able to overcome your social media fears and use it to the benefit of your business.
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7 Interesting Ways Small Business can Use Social Media

February 18, 2012


When small business owners hear about social media their attention immediately goes to Facebook and Twitter. They think of social media as a place where customers go to gossip and complain about their businesses or where business owners can go to publicize their products. This limited view doesn’t do full justice to the potential social media holds for small businesses. There is lot more to social media than just Facebook postings and Twitter broadcasts. We showed how you can use other interesting social media tools as well as some emerging social media tools in earlier posts. In this post we will review how you can use those and other tools in interesting ways to improve your business.
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How to Make Daily Deals Work for your Business

February 14, 2012


Daily deals facilitated by companies like Groupon and Living Social are double-edged swords for businesses. On one hand, they help you get new customers and improve sales. On the other hand, you end up with high operating expenses and dissatisfied customers, if not done right. Reading the horror stories that some businesses experienced you might think that it is never a good idea to work with daily deal companies. While this reaction is understandable, it may be extreme and may result in you losing out on the benefits offered by daily deals. We think with the right approach and proper planning you can make daily deals work for your business. Below we provide tips on how to do it.
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Is Groupon and other Daily Deals Good for your Business?

February 11, 2012


Daily deals have proliferated in the last year like dandelions during spring time. I am receiving at least 4-5 deals from one well-known daily deal company alone. Are you feeling left out because you still have not run any daily deal yet? While many businesses and consumers have taken advantage of this latest marketing tactic, I don’t think you need to feel sorry if you have not jumped on this bandwagon. This is because for every business that has seen great success with daily deals, there is another one who can share horror story from his experience. Just look at the experience of one particular business.
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What Business are you Really in?

January 28, 2012


“What business are you in?” This is one of my favorite questions to ask when we meet with small business owners and entrepreneurs. On surface this appears to be a very simple question. If you are a pizza business owner, of course you are in the business of selling pizza or food. But, think about it in terms of what value are you bringing to your customers rather than what you are selling. Are your customers really craving for pizza or are they looking for the convenience of no cooking and pizza happens to be one of the choices? Are they ordering pizza to feed bunch of kids at a birthday party? Are they looking to satisfy their hunger after late night partying without having to drive to your store? As you can see, how you look at your business can have a significant impact on how you run your business. In fact, it can determine the success or failure of your business down the road.
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