Cathy Stucker - The Idea Lady

Attract Customers and Make Yourself Famous

Learn from Your Competition

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Watching your competitors can give you clues about what you can do to grow your business. Seeing what works for others (and what doesn’t work) will give you the knowledge you need to make changes that will make your business more profitable.

Although you should never copy exactly what your competitors are doing, you can certainly learn from it and adapt some of their good ideas to fit your business. Here are some of the things to look at:

What are their keywords? What keywords are they ranking for? What keywords do they target? Research your competitors’ keywords and use that information to review your own keywords. You may want to target some of the same keywords, or look for keywords that are less competitive that will be easier for you to rank with.

How do they engage? Watching how your competition engages with their audience can teach you ways in which to improve your own engagement. Read their blog. Sign up for their email list. Follow them on social media. What do they do well? Where is their engagement lacking? Identify mistakes and successes in your competition to ensure that you’re covering all bases.

What topics get their audience engaged? Are there topics of discussion on social media and blog posts that get more comments and shares than others? Are there topics that lead to negative engagement, where they anger the audience?

How can you differentiate yourself? You do not want to be exactly like your competition. By seeing how you and your competition are the same, you can identify more ways to make your business stand out. The more ways that you can differentiate your business from theirs, the more successful you can be.

What are their weaknesses? Do they have a limited number of products? Do they only offer one format (e.g., ebooks or video) and not give customers a choice in how to consume information? By studying what your competition has to offer, you can identify gaps in their product line that you can fill. This is yet another way to make your business stand out over theirs.

What influencers do they work with? Do they promote affiliates and others within your niche that you can promote too? Have they interviewed (or been interviewed by) thought leaders in the niche? How can you use this information to build your reputation and increase your profits?

How much do they charge? You don’t have to charge less to get more customers, but you should know how your prices compare to the competition. (It is much more likely that you should consider raising your prices than lowering them.) Also look at things like what type of ordering system they use and the payment methods they accept.

What software and systems do they use to run their businesses? Get into their funnel and see how it works. What do they use for their email list? Order taking and shopping cart? Product delivery? Affiliate program? Do their systems seem to work better than yours?

You may discover something unexpected in this process: Your competitors are not the enemy. One or more of them may turn out to be potential joint venture partners, especially if you do not compete head-to-head. Look for opportunities to work together to jointly serve your customers. That might mean that you promote each other’s products, create a product together, or interview each other on your podcasts or blogs. You might even get customer referrals from your competitors.

Once you have done your research, start implementing what you have learned. Some changes will be simple and can be done in minutes. Others will take more time, and perhaps a financial investment. You don’t have to change everything overnight, but start making changes to make your business more profitable and keep tweaking to improve your results.

Listen to Your Customers

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listen-to-customersWant to have a winning product? Sell what your customers are asking for. Sometimes, they will come right out and ask for the things they want — other times you have to pick up on more subtle signals.

One early example in my business came from my Solo-preneuring class. Solo-preneuring is about making money on your own terms, doing work that you love. One of the things we do in the class is an exercise where we brainstorm ways to get people to pay you to do what you love to do. Invariably, one of the things they wanted to get paid to do was shopping. We would talk about things such as writing a guide for bargain shoppers, being a personal shopper, etc. When I mentioned mystery shopping, there were two reactions. Some students had never heard of it, but wanted to know more. Others had heard of mystery shopping, but had no idea how to get started as a mystery shopper.

None of my students specifically said, “You should research mystery shopping and sell the information to us,” but I saw that there was a lot of interest. In doing some research (this was pre-Internet), I discovered that there was no information readily available. [Read more…]

“How Am I Doing?”

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Former New York City mayor Ed Koch was famous for asking, “How am I doing?” The question let his customers–the voters of New York–know that he was interested in their opinions, and that he valued their feedback. Do you regularly ask your customers how you are doing?

As a professional speaker, I am accustomed to getting immediate feedback from my audiences. At the end of each seminar, attendees are asked to complete evaluation forms. Over the years, my performance has been evaluated by thousands of people. Fortunately for my speaking career, the responses have been overwhelmingly positive; however, I learn from both positive and not-so-positive comments.

The secret to successfully implementing changes based on customer feedback is first to determine what changes are necessary. There are several methods that can be used to solicit customer comments.

In-person discussions with customers, such as through focus groups, allow you to hear what customers think. If you run the focus group you may get answers that are not as candid as they should be, as customers may not want to give you the unvarnished truth about problems. Using a facilitator, with you out of the room, can make it easier for them to open up.

Instead of a focus group, consider assembling an advisory board made up of customers. Ask customers who represent various segments of your market to meet with you to give feedback on your products and services and make suggestions about how you could better meet their needs.

A written or online survey may be appropriate for getting opinions from a large group of customers. You can mail a paper survey to customers, or hand out survey or comment cards in your place of business. Make it easy to respond by including a return envelope or putting out a box to collect the forms. Online surveys can be conducted at little or no cost through services such as http://www.SurveyMonkey.com/.

Keep your survey short and simple. If it is too complicated, customers won’t take the time to respond. You may want to focus on one aspect of your service, or one product line, to keep the number of questions at a manageable level.

Give customers the option of providing feedback anonymously. They will be freer to offer their true opinions if they can do so without divulging who they are.

Once you have the results, review them objectively. It is tempting to think that anyone with a negative opinion simply does not know what they are talking about. Do not let your ego get in the way of receiving important information.

Make appropriate changes. If it appears that a lot of customers want you to have hours on Saturday afternoons, it might be worthwhile to do that. You do not have to implement every suggestion, though.

Once you have made changes, let customers know what they are, and that they were made in response to customer requests. Even those who did not participate in the survey will appreciate that you are reaching out to customers to serve them better.

Too Many Choices

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A confused mind does not buy, and offering customers too many choices can cost you sales.

Conventional wisdom is that the more choices customers have, the more likely they are to buy. That may be true when customers have very specific wants or needs, and they know what those wants or needs are. However, often having lots of choices just confuses customers and they do not buy anything. This is especially true if the customers believe the choices are very similar to each other.

One company tested this idea this way: They put 26 flavors of jams and preserves on a table. Customers could taste any or all of them, and if they made a purchase they got $1 off. People circled and chatted, but they didn’t try and they didn’t buy. There were more choices than they could effectively process, so they withdrew. Buying jam is not a life-altering decision, yet customers opted to make no decision rather than risk making a “wrong” decision.

Later, the company repeated the exercise with just six flavors. This time, people sampled and they bought. After all, it is easier to make a choice between raspberry and grape than it is to choose from among red raspberry, golden raspberry, black raspberry, golden red raspberry . . .well, you get the idea.

Do your customers have a hard time deciding where to start or knowing what products or services they need? Ask a few questions to determine their needs, then make a strong recommendation of the right starting point. After all, you are the authority and they are turning to you. If they seem tentative about committing, make their first experience with you low-risk. Don’t suggest they take the most expensive option or make the longest commitment. Recommend an entry-level product or service safely within their comfort zone that will help them get the results they need.

If you find that your customers are knowledgeable and opinionated, and they want lots of options available, you can offer choices while still making it easy for the undecideds. Offer a “standard” or basic product that meets most customers’ needs. Make options available so customers who know what they want can get exactly the right mix. Then, package some of the most popular options together. For example, Dell Computer has standard computer configurations you can order. If you aren’t sure exactly what components you need, you can buy one of their standard configurations. Or, you can start with one of the standard systems and add and subtract components until you get the system that is exactly what you want.

Bundle products together so that customers don’t have a lot of decisions to make, and they will appreciate how easy it is to buy from you. To make the bundle more enticing, offer a discount for the package. The same principle works for services, as well as products.

Somewhere between Henry Ford’s, “You can get it in any color, as long as it’s black,” and today’s trend of too many choices, will be the level of choice your customers find comfortable. Find that level and you’ve found your customers.