Your customers are your main assets. If they don’t believe in your business, they don’t buy. But when they appreciate your company and share your values, something wonderful can happen. Your business has the potential to grow viral and become a major player in the market. And all it takes for it to happen is to appeal to your customers. Ultimately, it’s the kind of thing that is easier to say than do. But with the right strategy, it’s not impossible to boost your presence on the market and grow beyond your local target audience. What is the plan to success, you ask. It’s about putting your customers back at the center of your business. Indeed, you need to make your customers the key reference for all business strategies, whether you’re considering internal transformations or product innovations. Every project has to be analyzed in terms of how it can improve your customer’s life. Indeed, by creating a customer-focused approach, you can ensure that your company will only maintain projects that are associated with an increased in customer’s satisfaction, and consequently revenues. Indeed, a happy customer is a customer who is more likely to come back. But before you can invest in global customer-targeted marketing campaigns, you need to establish the foundation of your strategy. Here’s how to do it.

#1. Get to Understand What Makes Them Tick

Do you know what your customers actually want? The easiest way to understand how your customers think and what they expect from your business is to ask them. Admittedly, you can’t run individual surveys with each customer. But you can collect online data and utilize them to get a better insight. Google Analytics is by far the most common web tracking tool, and it is also one of the best. There a bonus to it: It comes entirely for free. So, once you’ve set up your tracking code, you can observe how users find your website, how they interact with it and which pages are the most successful. Through cookies, you can set the anonymous visitor identification, which allows you to differentiate each user and identify returning visitors – which is useful to get to see how long it takes for a visitor to commit to purchasing. As you collect data,  you can get to differentiate your target audience into numerous groups. You can use A/B testing with each group to create tailored content and conversion paths. The better you understand your audience, the easier it is to sell to them.

#2. Make It Easier to Contact You

You need to gain your customer’s trust if you want to boost your sale revenues. As customers are becoming more and more digital-savvy, you need to make sure that your web presence highlights your business features. Users react positively, for instance, to corporate-looking phone numbers, such as 1300 phone numbers Australia or 1800 numbers in the US. A toll-free or shared charge number is an indication that you want to provide your customers with the best possible service. Additionally, you need to give a choice of contact methods. While some customers like to call and discuss their issues on the phone, others prefer to use the online chat function to get an immediate response while browsing your site. As a rule of the thumb, the favorite contact methods are phone, chat and contact forms. The more options you provide to get in touch, the easier it is to appeal to all your customers.

#3. Don’t Ban Foreign Customers

Since the introduction of the GDPR regulation in May 2018, a lot of companies have had to deal with the challenges of EU-based customers. Indeed, according to the GDPR, you can’t collect and utilize a customer’s data without their explicit content. If the customer requests from you to delete their data, you have to oblige without 30 days. However, many US-based firms have chosen to exclude EU customers to avoid data risk. It is in your interest to remain accessible to international customers, as excluding them can affect your revenues.

#4. Keep Your Interactions User-Friendly

Your customers don’t like to waste time. They want to be able to handle most queries in a matter of clicks. Consequently, keeping your website and customer services user-friendly is essential to encourage transactions. An example of an unfriendly experience is Amazon, which refuses to recognize that gmail.com and googlemail.com addresses are one and the same. Ultimately, you want to keep a smooth process throughout the conversion path.

#5. Engage on Social Media

When a customer gets in touch, you answer their questions and initiate the conversation. However, too many companies continue to ignore social media interactions. When you do, you are, ultimately, ignoring a potential customer. If your company posts content on social media, you need to acknowledge comments and queries. Failure to do so can cost you future transactions. A customer who is ignored would prefer to turn to a business that pays attention to them.

#6. Don’t Lock Them In

A lot of small businesses try to lock customers into a long-term contract. Ultimately, your role as a company is to deliver value to your customers. But, the danger of a long-term contract is that, as the contract progresses, the products or services you provide may not be relevant anymore to the customer’s situation. After all, the market is constantly evolving and bringing innovation and new challenges to light, which render your long-term offer obsolete. As customers get frustrated in a locked contract, you’ll notice more negative reviews and a drop in brand reputation.

#7. Create Social Media Challenges

How do you best show your customers that you care about them? High-quality services and excellent customer experience are, of course, essential factors of your success. But you can also create room to showcase your customers’ skills, creativity or choices through a viral social media challenge. The advantages are double. Firstly, you get exciting content to share. But secondly, you can utilize this strategy to bond with your audience group and leverage the voice of new advocates. Alternatively, you can also write regular blog articles about your customers.

There is no miracle recipe when it comes to creating a customer-focused strategy. You need to put your customers at the center of your business activities, from data monitoring to user-friendly terms and processes. A business that cares about its customers is a business that can grow.