Know your customer

Knowing your customer is about understanding your customer's buying behavior: what they use the product for and how they are likely to buy it. You need to be able to describe your target customer incl. age, life-stage, potentially marital status and their behavior with your product.

For example, one of my clients is making hair products from natural ingredients (e.g. shea butter, coconut oil etc.) and selling them under her brand name. She is taking advantage of the current "go natural" trend amongst the black community in South Africa and across the globe.

Her target market is the savvy, young professional who wants her hair to be both healthy and look good. This customer is comfortable buying on the internet as long as she believes the product will work for her.

At BGH, we created a marketing campaign for my client that included packaging the product in a professional manner, setting up a strong social media presence to improve the credibility of the brand as well as placing testimonials from clients in order to assure our savvy, young professional that the product works.

When you have this in-depth understanding of your customer, you are able to create, package and market your product in a way that best appeals to your market.

Key questions to ask yourself are as follows:

• Why do customers buy this product?
• How do they currently buy it?
• Is the buyer different from the user? (e.g. parents buying toys for children)
• How do the buyers needs differ from the user's needs?
• Who influences the buying decision?

BGH Example
Currently BGH's customer is SMMEs. They buy the products in our category to fulfill compliance requirements when applying for funding etc. The buyers are the SMMEs but the users are typically the banks and funding entities that asked for the product (e.g. business plan) and any products sold need to meet the user's criteria.
Currently customers are purchasing these products through both online and offline channels.

BGH aims to revolutionize this industry by creating plans that are not only used to seek funding but that also useful for the business itself as it moves from start-up to growth phase.

[For more information, send us a message or email info@blaqgoldholdings.com]