This article is part of our Know Your Customer Series. Use the links below to read all issues.
Issue 1: Learning about Your Customers’ Purchasing Behavior
Issue 2: Why You Should Segment Your Market
Issue 3: 7 Ways to use Social Media
Issue 4: Who Do Your Followers Follow
Issue 5: Essential Tools to Help You Learn About Your Audience
The better you know your target market, the better you can offer the content and products they’re looking for. One great way to research your audience is to see who they follow. You can learn a great deal about your ideal customer this way.
Your Customers’ Likes and Preferences
If you know the influencers, blogs, and YouTube channels your audience members follow, you can learn a great deal about what they like. You can discover their hobbies and interests by seeing what content they consume in their free time.
Problems You Can Solve
More importantly, you can discover the problems your audience is facing. The best marketing addresses customers’ problems and offers them solutions. Your customers follow who they follow because these businesses or individuals offer the help they’re looking for. This is an extremely valuable insight to uncover.
Your Target Market’s Buying Behavior
You may be able to discover more about your target market’s buying behaviors by looking at the people they follow. They may follow businesses they buy from. They may follow content creators that promote or write reviews of products they’re interested in.
Get a Grasp of the Competition
Knowing who your audience follows also gives you some insight into the competition. You can better understand who is popular in the industry and then figure out ways to set yourself apart. Through this, you can discover your own unique strengths. You may find a way to fill a gap in the market that no one else is covering.
How to Find out Who Your Audience Follows
The best way to find out who your audience follows is through social media. A quick look at any of your followers’ profiles will show you what other businesses they like. Following your audience and seeing what they post will also help.
You can also ask your customers directly. One way to do this is by conducting online surveys. You can hold focus groups online where you discuss what people follow and what products they buy. You can also use each touchpoint with a customer to casually ask them.
What Can You Do with This Information?
The insights you gain from seeing who your followers follow is an important part of building your customer profile. It will help you identify your audience’s preferences and needs. But you can take things one step further by using this information to research your competitors. Create a list of businesses or content creators you see a great number of your audience members following and follow them yourself. Keep abreast of what they’re doing, and you’ll get ideas for things you can do.
To go one step even further, you can identify influencers among these businesses to reach out to and collaborate with. There are many benefits to doing this, but one is that it will lend you further credibility and expertise in the eyes of your customers.
Knowing who your customers follow offers a variety of benefits and it’s very easy to do with social media.
Do you want to learn more about gaining insights about your customers? Check out my upcoming free training – Know Your Customer Workshop, which teaches you the A to Z of creating effective customer profiles and helps you achieve your business goals. www.KnowYourCustomerWorkshop.com