There is a lot written about targeting customers who have a need. That is correct, however when marketing your products or services this can lead you in the wrong direction.
Stoney deGeyter wrote an excellent article on Search Engine Guide called You keep Using That Keyword. I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means.
Reading his article reminded me that it can be easy to miss the signals when looking for customers to attract. This is often the case when deciding what market you want to compete in.
You need to work out the difference between those customers having a need and those that actually have a desire to take action.
For example, a number of people have a need to keep fit and healthy for different reasons. However only a percentage of those people will have the desire to take the necessary action to ensure they keep fit and healthy.
Choosing the market to target is an important first step, because if you get this wrong then it doesn’t matter how good your positioning is or how informative your content is.
If there are not enough people with the action desire then it will be difficult to have a successful business, regardless of how good your product or service is.
The good news is you can find a lot of this information whether you sell locally or on the internet. You can see if people are buying similar products and services, how often etc. There are a number of ways of finding this information out including using a product called Market Samurai which has a trial version available.
This type of research will also uncover additional information about potential customers that will give you a head start when you develop or refine your positioning and marketing communication.
While you would conduct this research before you launch you can also do it to refine who you are targeting to be more successful.
What are your thoughts on this area, do you conduct research to see if there are people with the desire to buy?
Gosh, Susan, I don’t think you could have picked a better anology to illustrate your point than personal fitness. In my selling days, we were always instructed to find someone’s pain. That was easy enough to do but what the sales managers never told us was a lot of people are quite happy to live with their pain. If you keep pestering them before they’re ready to take action, you end up with a lot of pain of your own. Nice post.
Hi Sarah,
I liked the way you say some people are happy to stay with the pain. That is so true and it an old truth is you keep focus on the pain or problem they will just ignore the messages.
Thanks for commenting.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Sarah Mitchell, Heather Smith and Susan Oakes, Susan Oakes. Susan Oakes said: Your Customers Have The Need But Do They Have The Desire http://bit.ly/dkyCBF [...]
Hello Susan,
I came to your blog from a link in your comment posted in “Small Business Trend”.
I read this post with interest and agree with you that people buy due to emotional desire most of the times rather than the needs. And I think this hold true to many products or services like a new fashion cloth, ebooks, MP3 player, new pair of shoe etc.
On the other hand, there are real need to be satisfied in the corporate world.
In any case, your article reflected a real life scenario
Cheers
Dr. L M Foong recently posted..Do you need a Business Plan
Hi,
Thanks for your comments. I agree with you about there are real needs in the coporte world. I would say though that there still has to be the desire to take some action even in the corporate world. One question for you don’t you think there is an emotional element involved in corporate buying situations?
Your Customers Have The Need But Do They Have The Desire?…
There is a lot written about targeting customers who have a need. That is correct, however when marketing your products or services this can lead you in the wrong direction. You need to work out the difference between those customers having a need and …
Susan,
Great article and great points! I really like the analogy of fitness. I saw a statistic recently that only 25-30% of gym members still attend after the first three months, they see a need but have no desire.
I saw Stoney’s article reposted here on Bizsugar recently; it was a good one.
Thanks for a great article on marketing, targeting and influencing!
Yoni
Hi Yoni,
He does write good articles and that is an interesting stat re gym members.
Agree with you that it’s easy to miss the signals when looking for customers to attract. We all have a tendency to simplify, which can be fatal.
Catarina Alexon recently posted..Too much talk of getting rich fast and guarantees
Hi Catarina,
You make a good point about our tendency to simplify when in many circumstances it not that straight forward.
That is a very good point. I get a steady stream of potential clients looking for a ghostwriter (someone to write a book or novel for them). They often ask me for a quote and then are surprised by the price.
Since books and novels take a while to write, I won’t sell my services too low. Others will, but I suspect they don’t know the work involved and will quite midway through.
I do have a good number of clients right now willing to pay my price, but I think my battle is is selling myself and my services, making sure they know why it is a good deal.
This really does fall into the need vs desire category though too. Maybe that is why some clients walk (and never actually finish their novel).
Thank you for giving me something to consider!
Hi Laura,
I am always surprised when people ask for a quote and actually do not have a budget in mind. Sometimes it takes a little nurturing to get the sale to keep the focus off price.
One question for you what do your current clients say are the benefits for them working with you?
Thank you, Susan for helping me! I can tell you that my clients have always been very happy with my writing. I’ve been very fortunate that no one is ever disappointed.
Two of my current clients are returning clients. One says that although I might seem expensive by the hour, I am actually the best deal for them, because of my speed and knowledge.
Another has hired me to write a fourth novel for him! He’s my oldest client.
The times that I have lost clients is when they go to Elance, where they can find writers willing to work for $10 an hour. They admit the quality isn’t as good, but they prefer the savings.
They also like the fact that I am very fast on turnarounds and communication. I usually beat my deadline by quite a bit. I write fast.
One thing that I do is to follow up and write them periodically to see if they have any new projects. I have noticed that they like this and will eventually hire me again.
Also with new clients, if they are on the fence, I just write them now and then, keeping in touch.
I also try to help them in other areas. For instance once client really needed a publisher for one of her projects. I found her one very quickly (a connection from Linkedin that I had developed). That carried a lot of weight with her. Although I didn’t get paid for the connection (I didn’t want to be paid), I have gotten many leads from her and she has become a good friend.
So, how do I use this? Thanks!!
Laura Sherman recently posted..Dean Blehert On Becoming A Poet
It seems you are on the right track Laura. When you think about it the freelancers at Elance are not what I would call your direct competition as the clients are willing to focus on the money side versus the benefits.
Keeping in touch and helping out are the little things as your example shows that pay off. Maybe a dumb question, but do all writers charge by the hour or can you charge for the project without spelling our the hourly rate?
I have focused on the pain but never really thought about focusing the desire. Your example was perfect and I will now reflect on my approach.
Julia M Lindsey recently posted..4 Great Reasons Why You Need an Editor
Let us know how you get on with this approach Julia.
Susan,
You make an excellent point about the difference between customers who have needs and customers who actually have the desire to take action. When I was running PPC ads for a product I was selling, I was bidding on keywords that people who were early in the buying process were searching on. Eventually, I learned that as people go further down the buying-funnel, their searches become more fine-tuned. Once I recognized the difference, I ran more successful ads targeted to customers who were ready to buy. They had the desire to take action – and buy my product.
Sherryl Perry recently posted..3 Tips for Building Awareness & Getting Your Website on Track
Hi Sherryl,
Thanks for your example. I made the same mistake and it makes a big difference to results. One question for you if you can share how did you work out the keywords that indicated people were ready to take action?
My ads were for a product targeted to a very specific niche market – Virtual Tour photographers. A lot of people who were clicking on my initial ads weren’t ready to buy. They were looking for information. Lots of them didn’t even know what a virtual tour was. I had been bidding on terms like “rotating camera mount”. That’s a term that a newbie would search on. When I did my keyword research, there were thousands of people searching on that. Far fewer people were searching on “pano head” – because only people who already knew what a pano head was would be searching on it. I also bid on keywords like “PTGui”. Again, only someone who had already done the research and knew what it was would be searching on it. I went from almost a 100% bounce rate on my PPC ads to around 50% and less.
Sherryl Perry recently posted..Are Your Website Visitors Sticking Around Or Bailing Out
Sherryl, thank you for sharing the information. One thing I got from this is perhaps those new to using PPC or keywords look at terms that have a high number of searches without thinking it through from a customer buying process. As you example showed the terms resulted in fewer searches but targeted at those looking to actually buy.
You summed it up perfectly Jeannette. The book that helped me figure this all out is “Search Engine Adviertising – Buying Your Wayt to the top to Increase Sales” by Kevin Lee and Catherine Seda. I highly recommend it.
Sherryl Perry recently posted..Need More Eyes on Your Website Comment on Blogs
Susan
I talk with my clients about two kinds of customer needs: active and latent.
The sales prospect who has “active” need and desire for your product or service, needs it now and wants it, too, is often a very small fraction of the market, and just as often difficult to find. That’s why Google Adwords is such a profitable service: it lets the prospect “self identify” as having both.
Latent needs are simply needs that aren’t matched with desires yet. Selling to a prospect with latent needs is far more challenging. There is no pain, or not enough result in a desire to fix it. In this case, it’s often active listening and questioning about the consequences of not taking any action that can help build desire.
Hi Casey,
That is a great way of describing customer needs and very easy to understand. Thanks for sharing this information.