Your target customers now

As a business navigating unpredictable times, it's important to focus on the things you can control.

This will usually be business spending (or saving), retention strategies and promotional efforts. It's about being smarter with your money as fuel to preserve or grow the business in the right way.

A lot of your efforts over the next few months, or possibly years, will be to ensure that the customers you have are the right ones for your business going forward. As much as understanding if you're a fit for them, you need to know if they're a fit for you. It's a bit like an interview process - or dating. Depending on your business model, you're potentially going to be in a relationship with your customer for a while, so it needs to make sense.

Who is your target customer now?

Covid-19 has changed the market and behaviour of people around the world. They may not have the same needs or wants (as we spoke about in our last blog post). There are a few questions you need to ask:

Is my target customer the same as before?
Is the problem still important to them?
Can they afford to buy my product or service?
Are they physically capable of buying from me?
Are the channels I used to acquire them before still effective?

What does my ideal business look like now?

In the current circumstances, you may already have your target customer and may or may not know it. Whether you're starting a new business, exploring pivoting, or trying to continuing business as usual, life is pretty uncertain and you can't afford to be uncertain about your customers.

It's important to get unbiased data back from your current and future customers in order to make the right decisions  about how to approach your business. Doing this will help you figure out some other key questions.

Can I afford to solve a different problem for them now?
Can I acquire my target customer in the same way?
Is this target customer cost effective for my business?
What business model works for my target customer now?

The great unknown

Nobody knows what the long term changes will be to your customers or market. Will working from home be the norm?  What will happen to co-working spaces? Will spending habits return to what they were before? The list goes on and on...and on.

The impact of Covid-19 will likely last decades. The one thing you can do right now is keep in step with your customers needs as they change to ensure your long term survival and growth in this time.