Time to Re-Evaluate Your Target Customers

You thought you had it all figured out, didn't you?

And you did!

The problem now with the Coronavirus pandemic is that the world and how our target customers spend their time looks completely different.

Whether this state is temporary or becomes our new normal, we need to understand what's happening with our customers.

We are at least 3 weeks into the stay-at-home order and life has been completely disrupted. With that you are likely to have contacted your employees, customers and partners to see how they are doing, how you can help and even continue moving forward.

What's also different now is how and where your target customers are spending time.

You're likely able to reach more of your target customers now, too. If everyone's staying at home, working from home and finding ways to invest any free time they had, they might be investing that time online.

Here's the thing:

Your existing customers might be happy but will they always be? Or are they looking at alternative choices to your solutions? How have you been serving them?

For potential customers, are they spending time where you thought and are the emotions they are experiencing still going to trigger an action to engage with you?

It's time to re-evaluate your target customers.

If you've gone through the personas exercise before and have your persona/s identified, go back through those documents and find out if 'Persona Sarah's' geographic and psychographic characteristics still apply. Are you missing anything? Or are you continuing to serve them as you have been? What's different?

A few things to look at:

1. Customer purchase patterns - changes in who, how many and how much

2. Time - they are spending time at home which means more time online

3. Customer service inquiries - contact volume, quality and resolution

4. Engagement with your content - more or less?

All of these things impact how, when and what you serve these prospects and customers. Having an understanding of the changes COVID-19 has on your business is important to modify what you're doing in order to stay relevant and serve with the greatest intent to help.

A re-evaluation is important - even if it's temporary - is because you already invested time and resources into identifying them, a marketing strategy in how to reach and connect with them and content that's reaching and engaging with them. You want and need to continue to connect with them. So you need to know where they are and how to get them to engage with you.

You've been connecting the dots between their needs and your solutions. Now is the time to keep the momentum. Just do so with empathy, understanding and kindness. The people in your business and those you serve far outweigh the numbers.

Go through and determine if any changes need to be made so you can continue to serve customers and prospects the best way you can wherever they are spending time in the Coronavirus days.

Check out this podcast episode on Personas where I dig deeper on the subject and provide the template and interview questions if this is new for you.

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Vicki O'Neill is a fractional CMO in Ohio with over 20 years of marketing leadership experience. She founded KenKay Marketing, a marketing solutions company, in 2011. Vicki hosts Connect the Dots a marketing and sales educational podcast for entrepreneurs and businesses of all sizes. She recently launched a new podcast,The Power of 3X, with her Gen Z daughters to give people a resource to learn about our youngest generation. You will find Vicki on most social media platforms (icons in the footer plus TikTok) but you'll find her most active on LinkedIn and Twitter.