“I Don’t Need To Research Because I AM My Customer…”
By Anna Johnson on January 23rd, 2009It seems trite to say that, as marketers, our aim should be to understand our customers. After all, the better we understand our customers, the better able we are to communicate with them in a persuasive way. And yet, how much effort do we really put into getting to know our customers?
I’ll be the first to admit that WE could do much, much more to understand YOU and the prospects, subscribers and customers of our company’s various products and services. And that’s something we’ll be focusing on in the months to come.
In fact, we’ve already implemented a few initiatives to understand our website visitors better, based on what people do on our sites. We’ll do other things as well. And, over time, I’ll share some of the tools we’ve used and report on their effectiveness.
But if there’s one thing I feel confident in saying it’s that the following statement could not be further from the truth:
“I don’t need to do research because I AM my customer”
Many of us have started our businesses based on being passionate about a certain subject, wanting to learning everything we could about it, and eventually wanting to be in a business based on that subject.
And so, because we are ‘a’ customer it’s tempting to think that we’re a TYPICAL customer and therefore understand the hopes, dreams, fears and frustrations, etc of our typical customer.
Well, there’s a saying that “a little bit of knowledge is dangerous” and, similarly, I think it’s dangerous to assume that because we are a customer, then we are a typical customer.
In fact, the drive to become a marketer – and not just a customer – of particular products and services AUTOMATICALLY separates us from many of our customers.
And, perhaps counter intuitively, this is probably MORE apparent in niches such as the ‘work at home’ niche where you might think that, as a marketer selling to other marketers, you know how your customers tick.
As far as I know, there are actually several, quite different segments within the ‘work at home’ niche, so it would be rather reckless to assume that everyone is similar. Even the desire to ‘work at home’ is based on varying motivations.
I’m not saying it doesn’t help to be a customer within your niche. I think it helps a LOT and gives you a MAJOR advantage over those who have never been a customer in your niche.
But, logically, you would never draw conclusions based on a customer survey of one… so it doesn’t make sense to base your ‘research’ solely on YOU.
On the other hand, it makes a lot of sense to do as much research as you can about your prospects, subscribers and customers. Then, once you’ve drawn statistically meaningful conclusions, your own experience will probably give you a deeper understanding.
