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How to Attract, Engage and Relate to Your Most Valuable Customers

Learn valuable tips on how to reconstruct fresh ideas about your ideal customers and how they can power your business.

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The key to synthesizing customer-centric information is to always be on the look out for the motivation, values, or beliefs that swim underneath it. That’s what makes up the mindset–or worldview–that causes your customers to act the way they do; including purchasing something or sharing it with her friends on Facebook.

Each time you ask “Why?” and dig a little deeper, you reach more useful information.

Next, it is important to trust yourself. You don’t need to ask your customers directly why they like what they like or do what they do, though that can be helpful (it can also be unhelpful). Instead, ask yourself why your customers like what they like or do what they do.

As human beings we all gather more information about people than we consciously realize. We are constantly making inferences from what people say or do. We are receiving unspoken cues all the time. We’re social creatures. It is how we survive social situations without getting punched in the face.

Unfortunately, many small businesses ignore this logic when they think about their customers. They go cold and forget to check in with their social brain to uncover hidden information just below the surface. But, when you ask “Why?” and then trust the information you receive you’ll soon connect with customers in a new and more meaningful way.

 

Communicate Empathy and Understanding in Business

Lastly, don’t forget to create deep empathy for your customers. Author Dan Pink calls empathy, “a stunning act of imaginative derring-do.”

Deep empathy isn’t just what you know about your customer. It’s literally being able to step inside his or her life from afar and use the same thought patterns and emotions that guide their actions. It is anticipating what will resonate with your customers on the deepest levels.

Creating deep empathy means that, as a small business you have access to their inner most feelings and thought-processes. When you have that access, you can create the frameworks that allow you to be of the greatest service. You can stop treating (or marketing) surface level needs and start addressing core desires.

Start by unlocking your social brain.

Instead of focusing on concrete details, allow yourself to probe the feelings of your customer. Given all what you know about your customers’ experiences, how would you feel if you were in their shoes?

Developing the answers to these types of questions will fundamentally change how you approach your brand, marketing, sales, and product development processes.

Ultimately, if everything your small business does–from a tweet to a product launch to a rebranding campaign–is powered by a deep understanding of your customers, it becomes easy for them to buy and for you to sincerely serve them. That ease is the key to sustainable, enjoyable growth. Most importantly, it’s powerful.

Got questions about crafting a deep understanding of your most valued customers? Leave a comment.

Connect with Tara on Twitter.

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