How to Get More Customers? Or who is the cake for?
The most common challenge for entrepreneurs is getting more customers. So what is standing between you and them?
Little Peter was deciding what cake to have for his 9th Birthday: his favorite rainbow cake or just a simple chocolate one. He figured it was his Birthday so it should be HIS favorite. His friends came over to celebrate his birthday but nobody wanted the rainbow cake. They all wanted chocolate. So the cake was left untouched and the children left disappointed.
By choosing the cake only he liked, Peter made himself the main customer for the cake. If you are turning nine and it is your Birthday party, it is ok to make mistakes like this. But very often we use the same approach when we design our business products and services.
So here are the three things we do with our business that keep our customers away.
1. Being too generic
A fellow entrepreneur who wants to get more customers recently told me: “Mid-size companies are really looking for a service like mine now”.
But “mid-size company” is too broad in defining who is your real customer. There is a CEO, managers, employees, etc. The list of people who are part of that company continues.
The question is: who is your service for?
The CEO who wants the company to grow? The managers who want to meet their monthly and yearly targets? The employees who want to realize themselves in their work? Every one of them has a different challenge and would react on a different approach from your side.
2. Inventing a problem instead of asking our customers
One of the advantages of how businesses are designed nowadays is that you can ask your potential customer to share their thoughts even before you have anything to offer.
For example, you have a hypothesis that placing an ice cream seller next to every school in town is a great business opportunity. But before you purchase the equipment, the license, and hire somebody to sell it, you decide to survey the parents [your ultimate paying customer] who bring children to and from schools.
Suddenly the survey shows that the parents would be very unhappy if the cold sugary snack is sold right next to their children. But they also tell you that if it was not the ice cream but fruit and vegetable smoothies — that would be great.
Instead of inventing what is your customers’ pain or desire, you can simply ask them early on. That will save you money, time and will enable you to solve a real problem.
3. Spending all the time designing a website instead of thinking about the customer
The articles on how to start your business usually begin with “you need a website, a logo, and omnichannel engagement”. But what if your service is actually meant for people who are not even using the internet?
For example, my grandma needs to buy big bottles of drinkable water every week. So she takes a trolley, goes to the shop, and carries them herself. But in her city, there is also a service that delivers bottles of water directly to a house. Problem is — they advertise themselves online whereas my grandma gets her “life hacks” from her friends over the phone.
So before you jump into spending hours and days on your website design, setting up Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. and choosing a perfect name — ask yourself is this the channel MY customers will find me on?
Asking yourself the questions above is the first step on the path to your future customers.
