Copyright 2015 Dennis S. Vogel All rights reserved.
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Retailers should take primary responsibility to establish & maintain connections with consumers. It's part of being professional & successful retailers.
How can you relate more deeply with a profitable niche or sub-niche? Can you do it without hurting your relationship with other sub-niches?
Since inventory can be like a zero-sum game, how many product units can you stock without risking out-of-stocks of a different product for another sub-niche?
By setting a priority on a niche or sub-niche, you can start to determine what you should do to attract & hold some consumers.
By testing messages & methods plus combining results with information & insights you gain, you'll learn what level of value is enough to maintain a connection.
Value doesn't have to be discounts. You can increase value by decreasing what consumers would have to do to get full value from what they buy.
You can package products & services together to reduce their time & effort of shopping.
You can assemble & customize what you offer so customers get what they want quickly instead of having to do the assembly & customization by themselves.
Offering as close as possible to a complete solution seems obvious, but a solution to what?
For optimal marketing, you need to know more than the problems people face. If you offer a solution to a low-priority problem, you could lose whatever resources you expended in your promotion & not gain anything (except learning a valuable lesson).
With limited budgets, consumers might buy solutions for high priority problems only.
Ask questions, search for ideas & link insights to determine potential & probable connections.
You can ask customers while they're in your store, but they might be in a hurry to go somewhere. Also, some people need time to think about questions & answers.
They might feel like a lot of pressure when somebody is there waiting for answers.
If face-to-face conversations don't work well, you can try self-addressed stamped post cards. It means you already have your store mailing address & a stamp on each card, so it's ready to be mailed back to you.
Why Do You Want To Know?
You can have an explanation for why you need answers. While you give a card to a customer, you can explain, "I'm getting ready to order more inventory. I need to know what's important to my customers so I can order what they want & need. Please answer these questions, then send the card to me. If you want to do it anonymously, you don't have to identify yourself."
This next question can help you focus on the right questions for customers: "Do you __ (fill in the blank by asking about activities you can help them do)?" After their answers, you can say, "I have this short request card about the activities we've just talked about. Please answer the questions so I can serve you well."
Be sure all cards are identical, so customers will know their responses will blend in with the others.
Let That Be A Lesson For You
Something to remember is this: In addition to the questions & answers, you'll also be learning what will & won't bring the responses you need. So, if you get few cards back, you'll know you need to test a variation to learn what works best.
You can compare response rates when you don't offer an incentive contrasted with results when you offer a gift or possibly a discount to reward them for helping you.
To make it easier for customers to answer & so you can focus on what suppliers offer, you can put in multiple choice answers. You also can add spaces for them to write answers.
These are the kinds of questions you can ask:
When do you start __(activity)?
What do you need to get started?
What do you need to finish it?
What have you used before to do this?
Are you satisfied with the results?
Did the tools have: enough features, too many features or not enough?
What else is happening in your life that I may be able to help you do?
What are the changes you've noticed that are starting, happening now & about to start or end?
Please use this forum or my email address to let me know what you're working on & the results you need so I can help you get what you need most.
I can help you more when you let me know what you need.
Copyright 2015 Dennis S. Vogel All rights reserved.
When you compete against big businesses with big budgets you need powerful marketing strategies & tactics. You'll find them here-
https://thriving-small-businesses.blogspot.com/
http://www.voy.com/31049/
Subject: Connect With Consumers In Their Specific Situations
It's important to have your messages & customer service "meet consumers where they are". This applies more than just physically.
I'm referring to consumers' general conditions - especially conditions you can help clients eliminate or improve.
Though upselling & cross-selling can help your business thrive, & your thriving business can keep serving clients, please be sure your profitable efforts are appropriate for clients' situations.
You should do your best to consult with them & help choose their best options.
Novices might decide to buy more advanced products/services before they're ready to fully benefit from those. They'd be frustrated, confused & possibly feel cheated out of money, if they think you should've advised them.
I've inadvertently frustrated some who told me their plans, then later they made mistakes.
Sometimes, it can be hard to know if people are just making statements or if they want guidance based on what they say.
If we say nothing, they'll be frustrated. Yet if we critique them, they may be angry.
At times, a good reply would be a question like, "I think I understand what you're saying, do you want some guidance?"
I'm using 'client' to make a point. You may think a 'client' is somebody served by a consultant. When people are sensitive about needing help, consulting should be subtle.
Consultations are apt to be very important to newbies.
Maybe you have customers, not clients. Maybe that is or will be your problem.
Clients Get More Than Customers Do
Customers just do transactions with businesses instead of with people in businesses.
Clients have business connections that go further than just transactions. Clients get advisory services, not just products. Clients get guidance to help avoid or mitigate problems. The guidance is from people, not just from a business.
Test, Monitor & Adjust, Then Repeat Consistently
I hope you've been monitoring your niche members' needs & desires so you can determine if they need different solutions.
You should also be testing your marketing methods to be sure you have effective methods as your previous methods become less effective.
Whether people accept your offers depends on factors that vary with each person & situation. I'm including more of those factors below.
Some of what I've written below pertains to attracting a niche of prospects - known as beginners, novices & newbies.
There are probably other prospects who have bought the same or similar things (as you offer) but from other sources. If you offer what fits their criteria better than other retailers, you should give consumers your offers to consider.
Expensive But Necessary
Since clientele attrition happens, you'll probably need to attract prospects to attain & sustain profitability.
Prospects may be novices or people who have varying levels of knowledge & experience with your business category, but not specifically with your business.
It's important to remember this - Compared with attracting previous clients, it's usually more expensive to attract prospects because they're not familiar with you & your store.
Yet, if you don't attract prospects consistently, you'd probably end up urgently struggling to attract a lot of them in the future.
You need to invest enough to 'educate' consumers who are unfamiliar with what you offer. You can inspire their trust by giving them information & guidance.
By showing your loyalty to them, you can earn loyalty from them.
Their trust & loyalty could increase their tendency to buy from you or at least, check in your store. If you don't offer what they want, they could choose another store after giving you the first chance.
Even if you don't urgently need them now, you should attract a number of prospects consistently.
You might thoroughly serve current clients to the point of diminishing returns. At that point, they wouldn't get much more benefit because you'd have little else to sell to them.
Lack of profits would only be part of your problem. Without money flowing in, you would have a cash flow crunch.
You'd be very stressed if you would have to invest a lot of money to attract prospects & pay overdue bills at the same time.
(I've covered attracting prospects in other posts.)
Trying to pull competitors' customers away could be too expensive, especially if it would set off a competitive battle.
A battle like that could include increased advertising expenses, decreasing prices (possibly profits also) & adding more value to offers.
Adding more value to offers would mean:
1- selling higher grade products/services at a price point of lower grade products/services;
2- adding more products/services to transactions but apply a low markup; &/or
3 - customizing what you offer for specific clients' situations.
Customization is a valuable differentiator. It's vital to remember variety adds costs, but not always more profit unless the costs are added into the prices.
When somebody is busy customizing for a client, other clients may feel neglected & buy from somebody else.
If you offer the same things as competitors (without adding more value), you should seriously consider changing products, services &/or customer service practices.
You can increase your differentiation by adding minor & major factors in synergistic ways. The combination can make major differences.
As you monitor your results, you should notice which factors matter to your clientele. You can adjust by iterating toward an optimal combination.
By tracking results, you can compete with non-consumption to avoid competitive battles. There are a lot of sources of information about competing against non-consumption.
Here's a link to a 2-page article - Competing Against Non-Consumption: A Conversation with Clay Christensen
http://www.businessinnovationfactory.com/files/pdf/christiansenconversation1.30.06.pdf
Why Do They Do What They Do?
It's vital to focus on consumers' activities & reasons for their needs & desires. Needs & desires are past, current &/or future gaps which products/services can fill.
This is analogous to physical gaps. What will patch or fill a gap? What will eliminate (permanently fix) the gap?
Examples of possible gaps:
Past gaps can be regrets - If applicable, people might want to reduce or prevent future effects of old problems.
Current gaps - People want to mitigate regrets while their problems are happening.
Future gaps - People want to avoid regrets by learning from mistakes & missed opportunities or they want to mitigate lingering regrets.
When you know their gaps, you can learn about their priority levels & aspirations. How (much) can your business help people with their ambitions? Which aspirations could you help them with?
If clients are emulators, whom or what do they imitate?
Do they emulate a person or a person's specific trait?
What do they need to emulate that person &/or trait?
Do you offer what they need?
Thank you for using my blog. Please let me know if I should clarify anything.
Copyright 2015 Dennis S. Vogel All rights reserved.
When you compete against big businesses with big budgets you need powerful marketing strategies & tactics. You'll find them here-
https://thriving-small-businesses.blogspot.com/
http://www.voy.com/31049/
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