The title is a pretty ironic question because just about everyone has, and frequently uses, smart devices of some sort. Smartphones, laptops, tablets, you name it, we all have and use them frequently to complete every day and common tasks and help us organize our lives. So how can we use this, as a business, owner to our advantage. Offering your goods and services online and allowing your customers to view, review and purchase your goods and services with their mobile devices is the key to establishing and growing your business. The key is to go to where you customers hang out the most and present your offering in the easiest and most convenient format possible to encourage your customers and potential customers to want to do business with you. Everyone knows, based on demographics that certain platforms are popular with certain age groups. Understanding the different demographics and how they use smart devices and on which platforms is the key to understanding your audience and their customer journey to solving their problems.
Using the approach of “If you build it they will come” will not work in today’s technology focused society. I’ve always been taught to focus on your mission and not your product or service. When you’re crystal clear on your purpose, your product or service will evolve as it needs to. Customer acquisition is all about solving your customer’s problems. Organizations spend too much time trying to introduce themselves to folks whose problems aren’t the focus of their company. Think about the routine that your customer goes through to solve their most pressing problems. Does your offering value have a financial, strategic and personal benefit? All of the aforementioned are key to understanding how to gain and keep a customer.
Knowing how your customers use their ever present smart devices to acquire the goods and services they desire is key. Creating value added information and access tools allows your customers to easily search and make decisions about what is most important to them. Talking to customers and asking them how they go about acquiring information, what tools they have used in the past and was their problem/issue solved is key to understanding the customer mindset. Regardless of your industry, understanding what issues your customers face everyday and which are most important to THEM is key to creating perpetual situations where customers are seeking you out. This is a early lesson for myself as a entrepreneur. The goal is to create a product or solution that fits, almost invisibly, into the daily lives of the target customer without them having to struggle to use it or find a way to fit it into their lives.
Smart devices have an integral spot in almost everyone’s lives. We use it to track our calendar(s), make phone calls, constantly communicate with others and purchase goods and services. We often find it tough to imagine our lives without our smart devices. Think about it, how many times a day do you pickup your smart device to perform an activity like send an email or text or post on your social media. Countless times a day we use our devices to keep our life organized and flowing. If you are a company that is not taking advantage of knowing where your customer are hanging out and for how long each day, you are missing the boat in terms of being able to know, understand, and address the issues that mean most to them.
I’ve created and preparing to launch Dealium.io because I went out and talked to small business owners about what is important to them and there responses was a need for a powerful and affordable customer acquisition tool that is app-based. My customers, through customer interviews, want a tool that is easy to use, intuitive and can allow them to reach their target customers quickly, easily and is an affordable solution. Understanding my target customer’s journey is what allowed me to develop my soon to launch referral marketing technology platform. Using the right tool (regardless of the format) has a financial, strategic and personal consequence and is an issue/challenge that they think about and have to try to solve every day because no regular flow of customers affects their viability. The mission of Dealium is to bring Small Business Owners and Consumers together in their communities for a win/win situation.
Dealium is a SaaS B2B Referral Marketing Technology Platform that directly connects small businesses with new customers through referrals from their existing customers using our proprietary algorithm-based referral code sharing technology incorporated with their customer’s SMS, Email & Social Media.
Dealium creates brand awareness, brand exposure & new customer acquisition opportunities for our business subscribers while allowing their customers to save time & money searching for reputable local small businesses.
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