American Aura
Customer Needs Analysis
By Bob Middleton
Running a business brings with it a whole host of issues, problems and anxieties. Some are general ones that every small business will face and others are industry specific, like banking regulations or catering hygiene rules. For every business there are things that must be done, things that should be done, things that might be done and things that are on the Too Difficult list.
Your first job is to start with the issues you face in your own business. List all your own business issues, put them in a able and categorise them:
Business critical
Legal requirements
Pipeline and customer facing
Good to do but not essential
If only there was time
When someone comes along to sell you something, you are most likely to buy things that help with category 1 issues, then category 2 and so on. Make sense?
So when you are working on your own marketing activities they should address the highest category that your customer has. To do this you need to have some idea of what those issues are for your customer and for that to be achievable you will need to have segmented your customers into groups with similar needs. Boiling a kettle of water is much easier than boiling a whole ocean.
How do you find out what your target customers pain points are?
Ask existing customers who are in the same target group
Look for blogs or sites where they gather to air their views
Read their trade/professional magazines
Commission a survey - WARNING most surveys produce garbage because they were not properly thought out in the first place
Test the market - try small sample marketing and see what results you get.
The pain points you identify will feed into your list of customer needs and then all of your marketing and advertising copy will be aimed at explaining to your customers how your product will meet their needs and how it will do so better than the competitors they may buy from instead.
More free marketing advice at w http://www.smemarketing.net/advice.html
SME Marketing - Marketing that just makes sense
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