Give Your Customers What They Want
Give Your Customers What They Want
Whatever may be said about attracting customers to your business (be it web hosting or anything else), it all seems to boil down to one thing: give your customers what they want. It sounds like a simple formula, but there are layers to it. With a recent offering from Monsterhosting.ca as an example, we’ll pick apart what it means.When you’re a writer searching for a topic for your next article, sometimes you get lucky. You go through news items and how to articles and several of them crash into each other in your brain in a way that both makes sense and creates something new. They illuminate each other, and perhaps even reveal some principles (or at least good ideas). That’s what happened in this case.
You might have read Monsterhosting.ca’s press release about the free live online courses the web host has begun offering. I not only read it, I visited the company’s web site (though I haven’t signed up for any courses yet). I think it’s a great example of a company giving its customers what they want. Let me explain how.
The first and somewhat obvious step in giving your customers what they want is actually finding out what they want. If you visit the home page for Monsterhosting.ca’s live online courses, you’ll see that web host polled its customers to find out what kind of courses they were interested in. There’s also a link you can click on to send an email with your own suggestions for more courses.
Put another way, Monsterhosting.ca is trying to solve a problem for its customers – in this case, lack of knowledge in certain areas. Or, put more broadly, the problem could be described as the need to learn what will help an online business succeed. There are a number of ways this need could be filled, of course; for a variety of reasons, Monsterhosting.ca chose this particular format.
How can you as a web host find out what your customers need? Well, one easy way is to ask them. Another way is to be receptive when they talk. Haunt web hosting forums and see what issues are raised, particularly if the person raising the issue owns the kind of site to which you’d like to cater.
You might even consider treating your trouble tickets as suggestions. By this I don’t mean you shouldn’t take them seriously! But once you’ve solved the issue, realize that the trouble ticket represents a need you may not have been fulfilling. Are you not supporting a script someone needs for their web site? Was your control panel a little too complicated for one of your customers? It’s food for thought.
Give Your Customers What They Want – Speak Plainly
The idea of complicated control panels brings up another thing to keep in mind when giving the customer what they want. People like to think that solutions to problems are simple; therefore, if you’re trying to offer something that solves a problem, keep it simple. Simple doesn’t mean skimpy; it means easy to understand.
For example, if the way you choose to give your customers what they want is by writing articles on topics of interest to them (an excellent approach, I might add), keep your language conversational. Depending on the topics you write about, you may have to resort to technical language or other jargon, but you should try to keep these to a minimum (unless you already know your audience can handle more). You don’t want to talk down to your readers, of course, but too much jargon – or a too-formal style of writing – is even worse. Keep it natural, and then don’t forget to edit it! That’s when you smooth out any problems. Strive to make sure your customers understand what you’re offering them.
On the home page for Monsterhosting.ca’s live online courses, the company makes it very clear what you’re getting. Each course is conducted online through conference software that lets you see the presenter’s screen. You listen to the presenter over the phone. You register for each course, which occurs at a specific date and time. Each course accepts a total of nine people, after which it is full.
But it gets even better than that. Click on the name of each course, and you go to a page that gives you the low-down on the course. You find out how long the course will last (most of the courses are either 30 minutes or an hour in length), read a one-sentence description, and bullet lists of course objectives and prerequisites. In short, you know what’s required of you, both in ability and time commitment, and what you’ll learn. The registration process looks as if it is very easy as well (I didn’t go all the way through it because I don’t have my own domain name, and that’s apparently required before you sign up – which, given Monsterhosting.ca’s likely goals for this offering, is not surprising).
Give Your Customers What They Want – Grab Their Attention
Remember, you’re trying to give your customers what they want, right? So you should give them the impression that you’re talking directly to them, and that it’s all about them. If you’re writing an article to attract customers with your wonderful content, make sure that first paragraph speaks directly to their situation. Let them know you understand their problem, without minimizing it, and that if they keep reading, they’ll find the solution they’re looking for.
Needless to say, it has to be real content if you want to get the attention of potential customers; you can’t just try to grab them and then not deliver. Word of mouth is a very powerful advertising tool, but it cuts both ways. If your offering is not up to what your customers expect, they’ll tell other potential customers.
So how does Monsterhosting.ca’s offer of live online courses address this? Well, the company is using perhaps the ultimate attention-grabbing tactic: it’s giving something away. The online courses are all free, and there doesn’t seem to be any limit as to how many you can sign up for. Remember, we’re talking about GIVING your customers what they want after all!
Of course this doesn’t mean that you should give away your MAIN products or services. The point to keep in mind is that any customer that does need those products and services, and is willing to pay for them, is likely to have other, related needs as well. If you can fill these needs well in a way that costs you little or nothing, so that you can give them away to your customers or potential customers, you’re ahead of the game. You’ve already proven that you can fill some of their needs; that’s the beginning of a trusting relationship. If they turned to you to fill some needs already, they’re more likely to turn to you when it’s time to fill other needs, for which you can reasonably charge.
Give Your Customers What They Want – Finish on a Positive Note
Filling a need…doing something for someone…solving a problem. These are all positive things. So after you do this for your customer, you should finish on a high note. For example, if you’re writing an article, don’t let it just sort of drag out and end with a thud. (Granted, that can be a real challenge; welcome to my world). You also want to avoid giving it a trite ending. How many times have you seen someone end an article with “So what are you waiting for? Start today!” That pair of sentences all but reek of marketing. Most people who are online can smell that a mile away. You’re not trying to market to your customers and potential customers so much as help them with their problems.
That being the case, ask yourself: what do you usually feel after you’ve solved a problem? I’ll bet you feel pretty satisfied. The way you end an article should leave your customers and potential customers feeling pretty satisfied as well. They should feel hopeful and optimistic about being able to tackle the original challenge that caused them to read the article or take advantage of what you offered in the first place.
I don’t have a colorful example from Monsterhosting.ca for this one, but if I were them I’d spend the last few minutes of every course on a quick summary of what was taught, and what the students should now be able to do thanks to what they learned. In the case of an article offering a solution to a problem, you should enumerate the benefits of using that particular solution.
If you give your customers and potential customers what they want and need, you’ll be on your way to building a trusting relationship with them. If you get their attention, they’ll listen to what you have to say – and if there’s meat to it, they’ll be happy to use it. Put all these factors together, and they’ll think of you the next time they need something you can provide – and those are benefits you can take to the bank.
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Give Your Customers What They Want