Do you think you know everything about your customers' needs? Can you manage them properly now? In fact, many companies say: “We know exactly what our customers want.” However, they haven't done customer research for a long time. Such companies do not study their audience and cannot determine the circle of potential buyers who could be interested. Accordingly, they will not receive data about the audience, they will not be able to develop effective advertising and successfully sell goods or services.

If you want to study your customers, take a closer look at them and ask yourself: "Am I giving customers what they really want?" Only by perfectly studying the target audience will you be able to choose the right approach to clients, present an offer and successfully close a deal. To better understand your customers, check out helpful techniques you can use in your work.

Method 1: Study customer feedback

Studying customer feedback online is the easiest way to get their opinion on your services and products. People, when faced with your company, gain experience, and based on their impressions, they evaluate you positively or negatively. Often this rating depends on the manager with whom the person communicated. According to his work, the client evaluates the activities of the entire company.

Your customer feedback work in two ways:

• show the level of your company to other people, thereby motivating potential buyers to order from you;
• provide you with objective data with which you can manage customer needs and improve your business.

It's good if people on your website and on social networks can leave feedback after making purchases from you. You can also find customer responses on Google, Amazon, Facebook, Yelp and other sites.

The Yelp service allows shoppers to rate companies on a five-point scale. You will be able to respond to all customers who have left a rating on this site. Sometimes this is needed to thank people for orders, and sometimes to provide clarifications in difficult situations. It is important to respond equally politely to customers who leave positive and negative reviews.

It's easy to create a business profile on Yelp:

1. Go to https://business.yelp.com/ and click “Manage my free ad”. Enter your company name to work with your account.
2. Next, enter the phone number and other data for registration.
3. After that, Yelp will send you an email to confirm your address.
4. From the email, follow the link to fill in your company details and add data.
5. You can now use your Yelp business account and get feedback from your customers.

Note that independent sites have more honest reviews from customers than direct contact with you. Be sure to take the time to read Yelp feedback and respond to customers. After reading the reviews, work to improve your service, making it more enjoyable and attractive to people.

Method 2: Study the activities of your competitors

The market is actively competing for customers. To know what and how to offer your customers, how to manage their needs, study the activities, tactics and methods of your competitors. Competitor analysis must be included in your marketing strategy. List the parameters that you need to look out for in this study. After studying, use some of the findings to your advantage and adapt to your business strategy.

How do you know what your competitors are doing? First you need to understand that the study of competitors is not theft of other people's achievements and ideas. Such analysis should be aimed at identifying weaknesses in order to counterbalance them to provide customers with advantages, to do what others do not do, to use methods that competitors do not use. If you prepare a unique proposal and develop according to the strategy, you will be able to win the attention of your customers and satisfy their needs.

There are the following options for checking competitors:

• analysis of websites;
• study of social networks;
• view available reports for your niche.

In other fields of activity you can also find tips on how to promote your business. Study the stories and cases of various companies, borrow tools for promotion and interaction with clients from them.

Method 3: Create a portrait of your buyer

How well do you know your target audience? Have you already completed a portrait of your client? Otherwise, you will not be able to manage a person's needs without recognizing their identity and drawing up a detailed portrait.

To compose a portrait of your potential buyer, define the following parameters:

• gender;
• age;
• geolocation;
• language;
• profession.

If you use general demographics to portray a customer, you will not get an accurate customer image. You need to work out the above criteria in more detail.

After that, examine the parameters of the other category:

• interests of clients;
• their views;
• behavior;
• possibilities;
• visited social networks;
• needs;
• desires;
• goals;
• pain points.

All this allows you to create a more detailed portrait of your buyer.

These and other parameters can be learned from social media when setting up ads, but you can conduct a survey to get more insight into customer needs. For example, you can send out questionnaires by mail and ask customers to rate your product/service. There should be few questions to make the client want to spend his time on your survey.

You can use Google Analytics to get valuable information about users who visit your website and social networks.

Tip 4: Keep track of your clients on social media

Nowadays a lot of people spend time on social networks, so there you can find your clients and understand their behavior. You will likely be surprised by the results, but you can better understand your target audience.

Create business profiles for your company and study your customers on such popular social networks:

• Facebook;
• Instagram;
• Twitter;
• Linkedin.

You will be able to see accounts, people, study their interests, chat with them, see what information they share and how they interact with different brands.

Tip 5: Explore analytics data

When users visit your website, they leave data about their behavior on the Internet. By looking at the analytics, you will see what products and services people order, what positions they are looking at, how much time they spend while on the site.

Use Google Analytics to get data about site visitors. It is very easy to set up analytics using this tool:

1. Register an account with Google Analytics.
2. Add your company name, website address and business line.
3. Enter your property details.
4. Add tracking code after your site's opening tag.
5. Check how this code works in your Google Analytics profile.

In addition, always put yourself in the client's shoes in any given situation. It will help you shape your approach to people and evaluate how they see you, your products and your brand.

Summarizing

The development of your company depends on whether you can find an approach to clients and satisfy their needs. Many entrepreneurs, while improving their products and services, unfortunately forget to study the opinion of customers about their company. In this case, they lose knowledge of the needs of potential buyers and wonder why they have so little sales.

If you want to get the key to managing customer needs, then you have to work and use the five easy ways outlined above. As a result, you will be able to collect as much information as possible about your customers, improve your strategy and develop successfully.

Use the browser-based CRM program Gincore to get tools for customer research. This software keeps records of any business, integrates with Google Analytics and other tools, allows you to optimize work, achieve better results and increase profits. Register on the site and increase the efficiency of your company right now.

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