Business creates customers…
When you start a business, that business creates customers. Ideally, those customers tell other people about your business and they become customers. The business grows and the brand grows, the brand grows and the business grows, a spiral upwards where one aspect strengthens the other.
Q. How can we increase our success rates on this?
A. By designing a space for the core customers (the people that we want for our business) so that they want to inhabit it.
Q. But I don’t have Apple’s budget or anything like it, what can I do to create a customer space?
A. If you don’t have a physical presence, and so many of my clients don’t, look at your online spaces. These can include your website, your Facebook page (business and personal), your LinkedIn pages, Instagram, email list, TikTok if you are on it, and so on.
Q. How can I make the space feel welcoming for my audience?
A. Look at the spaces you participate in as a customer. What is it about these spaces that appeal to you? Maybe it’s the high engagement from the community, maybe it’s the overall tone, or the implied code of conduct. Consider how you can create these elements in your community. Remember, building a community takes time so don’t get disheartened if it seems to be taking longer than anticipated. Community is a huge part of a strong brand.
A while ago, I had a conversation with the twin brothers who are behind The Happy Pear business in Wicklow. They remarked that people often assume that they are an ‘overnight success’ - they find this quite funny because they said it’s taken 13 years to build it all up. And some of those days have been pretty rough along the way!
The Happy Pear made their location very inviting, even during Covid, through the use of bright colours, friendly staff, and a consistent brand feeling between the physical location and the product range. They managed to maintain that sense of community at a time when we couldn’t get together, and maximised the online space to bolster their connections with customers.