“If you build it they will come” is great in theory (and makes for a killer sound bite), but does NOT work in practice.
New business owners often launch their business with a predefined idea of what they want to provide, and they do so without asking questions or understanding where their customers are coming from first. They don’t take the time to validate their assumption that what they want to deliver is what their intended targets want to buy.
Your business is not all about You! (Gasp)
When it comes to business, what the customer wants is king. If the customer wants something that’s different than what you want to provide, you’ll have to ask yourself which is more important – the success of your business, or going the path you chose. This is a major fork in the road, my friend, and one that you need to navigate as quickly as possible.
If you hope to influence or motivate someone to take action, the first thing you need to do is spend as much time as possible really understanding who they are and where they’re coming from. You need to know what their real pains and challenges are. (we touched on this in an earlier post this year)
Your business is all about THEM!
Your customers don’t want to be motivated, they want their problem solved. They want to be understood and served. It is all about THEM.
If you focus on trying to motivate people to take a particular action, chances are you will fail. Why? Because wanting to motivate someone is inherently a self-centered desire. “I want to click here” or “I want to build my list” or “I want people to subscribe” are all statements and sentiment that are all about YOU.
Commit to Understanding First.
If you want to truly connect with your audience, you need to start by understanding them better than anyone else does. Learn as much as you can about them, figure out where they hang out, where they shop, what they do. Once you know where they are, seek them out and start asking them questions.
- What is the real pain point in the market?
- Why are they willing to spend money on your product/service/offer?
- What is it like for them to not have a solution to their pain yet?
If you can understand your audience better than your competitors, you’ll be able to serve them better than your competitors.
Try to understand how your customers make a buying decision and why they aren’t choosing someone else. Try to understand what they want more than anything else.
Go deep and get results.
When you take the time to really go deep in understanding who your customers are, and what they need, and most importantly what they WANT, they will be that much more motivated (and predisposed) to respond.