Have you ever heard of Get to Know Your Customers Day? Held on the third Thursday of each new quarter (January, April, July and October), Get to Know Your Customers Day is a reminder for businesses to reach out to their clients and customers and learn about them.
Now, you might be thinking, “I already know my customers.” And that might be true. You might know their names, emails, age range, gender, location, job title and other general demographic information about them. You might even have buyer personas drawn up for your most frequent shoppers (and if you don’t have personas drawn up, you definitely should).
All of that is important information, but we want you to dig deeper.
Remember when small businesses were all bricks and mortar? You could walk into a local shop and the owner would know your name and could anticipate what you were going to buy.
Let’s get back there.
Ways to get to know your customers
Personal attention has given way to statistics and data, and your customers are much more than numbers. They’re what gives your business life – And that makes them pretty dang important.
Do you know what your customers’ pain points are?
Do you know what problems they’re experiencing?
Have you asked them about their wellness through the pandemic?
Did their business have to close temporarily?
How is the health of their business doing now?
Reach out to your customers directly via email and ask them how they’re doing. Or if you think your customers would respond better to something less personalized, set up a survey that gives them an opportunity to give you feedback and provide more information about themselves!
You can even use social media to make a connection. Ensure that your social media profiles are following their social media profiles and interact with their business’ posts!
How bant.io reaches out
At bant.io, a large part of our business model relies on getting to know the business and the business owner’s goals. We want to know whether the business is struggling in a particular sector, or if the owner is looking to branch out into a new location. We want to get to know their problems and experiences so that we can better help them automate their marketing efforts and make their lives easier.
We also make it a point to reach out to our customers for comments and case studies. Did bant.io live up to their expectations? What could we have done better? Our team strives to collaborate on messaging and creative to ensure that their company is being represented authentically in our efforts.
The bant.io marketing team thrives on customer outreach. Our marketing department is always reaching out to our customers to learn more about them for our social channels, YouTube videos and blog.
We email them directly, introduce ourselves and let them know on a regular basis how valued they are. We ask them if they’d like to participate on social media or our blog, and we’ve even sent them free bant.io swag packs or pizza lunches!
Making a human connection is important
We recently discussed the importance of taking the time to learn about your buyers with one of our customers, James, Business Development Lead at Flavor Sampling. He believes that personal attention and open communication are both important.
“It is important to take care of your customers as it’s much harder to get new customers than keeping the ones you have got,” he said. “Know who your target businesses are and pair the right services for their needs when [you] reach out to them.”
The more information we can learn about our customers, the better equipped we are to help them grow.
And making a human connection is also imperative for making sales.
“There’s a saying that people don’t buy goods, they buy people,” said Dana, a bant.io Sales Representative. “You can have the best service in the world but if you don’t make the effort to build a relationship, however brief, it’s hard for people to trust you enough to make the investment.”
Advice for business owners
Andy, owner of Virtual Sales Limited, has been a long-time bant.io client, and often talks about how our marketing automation platform has helped grow his business and take its destiny into his own hands. We’re proud of the relationship our company has built with Andy and VSL, something that Andy thinks is vitally important to his business as well.
“Virtual Sales by the very nature of our business are in constant contact with our clients on a daily basis to discuss elements of the campaign – highs and lows which they value as we are an extension of their company,” said Andy.
As for other business owners, Andy definitely recommends keeping in touch with your customers on a regular basis.
“I would say that even a simple email at least once per month is a good start – maybe tell them interesting news about your company or products that you think they might be interested in.”
In conclusion
So, to celebrate Get To Know Your Customers Day, take some time to reach out to your customers and ask them questions, business related or not. Remember that they’re people too, with lives and families outside of their business, and they might have other problems that your product or services can help solve.
Devanny
Devanny (dev-uh-knee) is a Social Media Marketer based in Las Vegas. She's a dog lover with a propensity for mystery novels, and when she's not at her laptop working on comprehensive marketing campaigns, she can probably be found running around Disneyland or curled up with a good book!