How to Attract (and Keep) Your Customers In Nigeria
The challenge of creating a product is one, while that of selling your product to customers is another. You must attract (and keep) your customers if you have any hope of succeeding in your business. If you like have the best product man have ever seen, if you don’t have a good system to sell your products, then you are a failure.
No two ways about that. You must have a plan to make people recognize and buy the value that you have created; else, you are almost equal to the person that has no value to sell in the first place.
Having a great product is not where it ends, you have to go further to convince people to buy your products. There is no young business that doesn’t face the challenges of acquiring its first set of users. It is very important to know and understand what these customers mean for your company.
Related: 7 Proven tactics for getting new ccustomers in nigeria
There are few start-ups that hit the market fully-fleshed out with every feature working perfectly. You must understand that the early stage of your business is not the best time to drive massive growth. Attract (and keep) your customers first before you focus on driving the massive growth of the business, whether through referral programs, paid ad campaigns or other growth strategies.
Actively solicit for the feedback of your early customers and use their suggestions to improve your product. Once these customers see your responsiveness to their suggestions and the quality of your product, they will automatically become the brand advertisers needed to start the next stage of growth.
Bearing these things in mind, here are three ideas for finding and keeping your first set of customers.
Related: Ten powerful marketing ideas to attract new customers in Africa
Ways To Attract (And Keep) Your Customers in Nigeria
1. You must seek out your competitors’ press.
You can Attract (and keep) your customers, especially if your startup takes the concept of an existing product and improves on it. You must find the media sources in every industry that have covered your competitor’s products.
The easiest way to do this is setting up Google Alerts for your competitors brand names. Whenever their names appear in the media, you must as a matter of necessity reach out to the same publications or reporters to do a story about your new product.
You must be more proactive and broader approach has to be taken to be able to reach the sources that might be interested in your solution.
This is required when you have a completely new product that hasn’t been addressed by the market. You should consider using sites like Twitter and LinkedIn to build relationships with the reporters you identify before doing your story, instead of sending a cold inquiry.
2. Answer problem point questions.
You must know the problem that your new product is out to solve, because if you don’t know, then you have got bigger problem than the need to attract (and keep) your customers. You must have to understand how your product solves specific problems better than your competitors.
Once you have identified the problem that your product is out to solve, check for places online where people are asking questions related to these needs.
If, for example, your product targets the world of graphic designers, sites such as Designers News give you the platform to respond directly to news stories and questions. By doing these things, you demonstrate your authority and mention your product where appropriate.
You must be careful not to spam because it is far better to become a trusted member of your environment than being blacklisted for posting promotions at every opportunity.
3. Always talk to people in your industry.
At the beginning of this article, you could remember that I mentioned that getting your first set of customers should be more of a learning curve than that of a revenue generation engine. This particular strategy can lead to both product improvement and customer acquisition.
Attract (and keep) your customers in the earliest stages of your product launch by reaching out to people in your industry who are both highly regarded and also have the potential of using your product down the line.
You must not pitch your product while reaching out, instead, you should tell them that you are developing a product in their industry and that you would like to know their take on what their needs are and how they are currently solving them.
You are most likely not to get a 100% response rate, but you can increase the odds in your favor by offering to pay these experts for their time. You will have the opportunity to acquire these experts as early-stage users and ultimately have them recommend your product to their colleagues and friends.
Once your early set of customers is acquired, being responsive to them is very important at this stage. You must show them how much their feedback is valued and how important they are to your company, and be certain that they will play a major role in driving future growth for you and your company.
Follow these guidelines, and you are sure to attract (and keep) your customers at the early stage of your business.
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