Have you ever felt confused when something you bought for your business that you thought would ROCK your customers’ worlds fell flat? Maybe that’s because you’re making the same mistake many of us make—seeing your business through your own eyes! You need to be seeing your business through your customer’s eyes.
In order to increase revenue and spend your money on things that WORK, borrow my following strategies for seeing your business through your customer’s eyes:
1. Curb Your Instinct to do Everything the Way YOU Like It (Unless Of Course You Are Your Ideal Customer)
Seriously though, if you have the same psychographics, demographics, behaviour, and preferences as your ideal clients (and you can back this up with research data), you can stop reading now and continue choosing things you like. If you’re not, keep reading!
2. Ask Yourself this Question: Will this DO THE JOB (Get New Customers or Keep Existing Ones), Or Do I Just Like It?
A lot of us when journeying out into the great big world of entrepreneurship are just choosing things we like, because we CAN. Being your own boss is a novelty at first and you want to choose things you LIKE because it’s YOUR business. Let’s flip that paradigm. If you were the only customer in your business, would you even have a business? NO. So, ask yourself every time you go to make a change or spend money, “Will this do the job (the job is to keep customers or getting new ones), or do I just plain old like it and want to do it?!” If the answer is the latter…you know what to not do.
3. I Know You’ve Heard This Before, But You MUST Be Clear On Your Target Audience and Then Research Them!
I’m sure you’re rolling your eyes at this oldie but goodie, but it’s a NECESSITY if you want to increase your revenue and marketing Return On Investment (ROI)! Who is your ideal customer? Do you have more than one segment? What are their demographics, psychographics, and geographic locations? Which platforms do they use? What do they love about you? They can’t even see your business if you’re not showing up where they are! This article talks about how to focus on your ideal customers.
4. Secret Shopping… Done Correctly!
Now I know you’re not the kind of leader who would secret-shop your staff without TELLING THEM IT’S COMING, but just in case, DO NOT DO THAT!!!! The correct way to do it is to build it into a system, build it into your goals! Let the team know that part of their feedback each month will come from mystery shoppers or callers or website users and we’re going to be asking them these very important questions (all questions are on a scale of 1-10):
- How kind was the team member who helped you?
- How professional was the team member who helped you?
- How knowledgeable was the team member who helped you?
- How likely are you to recommend us to your friends and family?
- Why did you chose that number (for the previous question)?
This lets your team know what to expect, and they will end up treating EVERY customer better just because they know this is being watched. As you know… what you watch you improve!!!!!
5. SURVEYS Are Just Amazing, and No, I’m Never Going to Stop Recommending You Survey Your Customers!
I DO recommend that you survey only your ideal customers (remember those demo, psycho, and geographics) or potential ideal clients (within your target segment.) I recommend you do it often, systematically, and you find out EXACTLY how your customers see your business and each part of it! This video talks about the need to keep current with consumer behaviour.
6. Shout Out to the Brick & Mortar Businesses Still Here (You’re Amazing)!
You have the most fun assignment of the bunch. Hang out in your store and pretend you’re a customer. It’s amazing. Make sure you also take notes and gather the data you need to improve everything from your customer service to your check out process to your product offering.
7. For ALL Businesses Online (and You ALL Should Be Online)!
Now I KNOW you have access to so much amazing data between your Google tools, website tools, and social media analytics—get it into a kick-ass monthly marketing report (ours is EVERYTHING) and use it to determine what is working and what is not. Seeing the data is a very sure way to show yourself that your customers prefer certain things/behaviours/wording/colours over others! USE YOUR DATA IN A MONTHLY MARKETING REPORT to make better and better decisions, every month.
8. Watch People Go Through Your Website
Yes I know, it’s super cool that you can do this, but this is the day and age where this is pretty common now! Aren’t we lucky?! So lucky. SO, Hotjar.com is one free tool I highly recommend and there are others out there (I just haven’t personally used them so I won’t recommend them) that will actually let you watch screen-captured video of people using your website (or trying to use your website) so you’re really seeing your business through your customer’s eyes. Make sure to get a big enough sample size, but you cannot ignore the data if a large percentage of your website users are not buying or clicking where you want them to – you need to change that page you like to a page that converts!
9. You Can Also “Real-life” Watch People Go Through Your Online Store/Website
Focus groups, or one at a time (this will take forever) are great, and you can have everyone bring a laptop, screen record if you can’t watch them all at once, or have them go one after another (set times), and actually (yes IRL) WATCH them try to go through your website and see where they get confused, stuck, or click right on through to purchase! In person is so great because you can also SURVEY them and ask things like, “If there were an add-on, would you have added it to your cart?” or “If there was a down-sell for this amount, would you have bought it?”
I’m going to leave you with those nine ideas but I want to remind you of one very important thing. In fact, probably the most important thing right now – people want to talk to people!!!!!
I LOVE automation, systemization, and making things efficient, but if you have the opportunity to ANSWER THE PHONE, or DEAL WITH A HUMAN IN REAL LIFE, TAKE ADVANTAGE!!!!!
Great customer service through actual human interaction is a rare thing nowadays and people are craving it. Plus, if you don’t answer your phone, they’re calling your competition.
Remember, Business Can Be Better™ and it should be!!!
