7 Helpful Questions to Ask as a Start-Up Business

If you don’t know your customer, do you really know your business?

When you first start your business it can be a hard slog building up your customer base. You know you have something special to offer. You’re trying hard to get the message out there via various marketing methods, your website and social media, but you wonder: “why aren’t they flocking to me?” Why are they not falling over themselves to use your product or service?

If your efforts so far haven’t been as successful as you would like, it could be that you haven’t quite got into your customer’s mindset yet. It’s great when you first have your business idea and are excited and can’t stop thinking about it. It’s like a new lover who has stolen your heart.

If you can drag your mind away from why you think your product or service is so amazing (and I love that you are so passionate about it) and just take the time to consider your audience’s point of view, you will find it becomes so much easier to connect with them in your marketing.

So how do we get to the heart of what matters your customer?

Let’s begin by asking…

1. What do they want?

We don’t want to push our ideas on to customers, we simply want to make what they want.

Laura Ashley

She was talking about home furnishings, but this can apply to any business or service. On the surface of it, say if someone buys a snack bar, you’d say ‘well they were hungry and wanted a snack.’ But what if it’s a healthy low sugar one? In this case, they want to be healthy, so they can lose weight so they can look good to others. Or be healthy and not get sick so they can live a happier life. Dig deep into the underlying reasons. What do they want? How do you offer it?

2. How aware are they?

Once you’ve thought about what it is they want, you need to think about where they are at in terms of awareness.

There are five stages of awareness, which go from being completely unaware there is an issue; noticing the problem; understanding there are solutions; knowing what those solutions are; and boom! to hopefully settling on your product or service as the solution.

In our healthy snack bar example, you are solving the problem of staving off hunger for a health-conscious person, so they won’t feel hungry and can stay true to their health goals. Ask yourself, ‘at what stage of awareness are they?’ Do they even know that not having a convenient healthy snack is an issue? Do they think there must be a solution? Are they aware there are brands out there like yours, and finally do they know why yours is the choice?

Which leads me on to

3. Why should they care about your product?

What do you offer? List the features of your product: what it is and what it does. Then from this decide what is the advantage of your product over others. So the healthy snack bar is made from dates and cashews, which means that it contains no refined sugar. Woo hoo!

4. So what?

No, we’re not done there. Next, you have to keep asking the question ‘so what?’ until you can’t answer it. Imagine you are your customer, and they are extremely hard to please. This is how you come up with the benefits. The big pay off that will have them reaching for their wallet before you know it. I’ll tell you what: ‘cos no refined sugar means we have created a healthier bar which lets our customers live their best life.’

5. You talking to me?

When you market your business, it’s not enough to know what the big benefit is, you also need to describe it in a way that puts your customer in the frame. So if your website tends to talk in terms of ‘I, we or us,’ you need to turn it around so that the customer is the subject. Instead, use ‘you.’ Make them part of it. So how about: ‘no refined sugar means it’s better for you so you will enjoy better health, which lets you live your best life.’

6. Are you speaking their language?

But we’re not done yet, oh no. When you know your audience, you know how they sound. How do you know how they sound? By listening.

Of course, it’s not always easy to collar your customers and ask them, but there is a plethora of information out there online. Check out competitor’s social media sites and see what people are saying.

Try reading reviews of similar products or services on sites like Amazon (known as ‘review mining’). Not only will you get more info on your customer’s likes and dislikes, you will hear the words and phrases they use to describe these. Use them to your advantage.

7. Did you raise them up?

Focus on what your customer wants to achieve by using your product.

Neil Patel

When people buy a product or service, they are not focused on helping that business make money. They want to achieve their own goals. Think about how you can make your customer become a better version of themselves.

Back to the healthy bar – the customer wants to be a healthier version of themselves. They could have grabbed a packet of crisps or a chocolate bar, but they didn’t. This all ties in with mindset: what did they want? Not just a snack, but a healthy way of staving off hunger. What has the bar delivered? It satiated the hunger and allowed the customer to feel good about eating it.

With these tips under your belt, you should have a better understanding of your customer which means you can better deliver what they want. Which means you get your product or service into the right hands.

And if it’s content you need, I can help you. Together we can create something amazing. Let me know.