A business concept is the direction and form of a company’s operations that gives a clear path when creating a business plan. Branding, including your positioning and first impression experience are the first things your customers will face when checking you out online. Regardless of the greatness of your business ideas, your branding basics need to be able to demonstrate the value of what you sell.
When customers do not understand your business concept, the sales of your product or service may never take off. You may be investing time and resources into brand development, sales campaigns and various forms of marketing, but you keep noticing that the people are hesitant to pay for what you sell. All this could be because your targeted customers do not fully understand your business. Or perhaps your business is not relevant for them.
Here at Brand Auditor, we run business concept audits and various other audits on a daily basis. Based on our millions of feedback data and insights, here are some of the reasons why your customers do not understand your business concept:
You don’t have confidence in your business idea
First and foremost, the only way to make anyone else believe in your business concept is to ensure that you have a conviction of the ideas yourself. If you have not convinced yourself how amazing of an idea your business concept is, you may not be able to convince anyone else. It is necessary to have confidence in your business as this will rub off on potential consumers and even investors if you are keen on sourcing funds for your venture.
If you are not sure about your business concept, we recommend to do a Business Concept Audit. This audit helps to understand how your business concept is received by your target customers. Are you solving a real problem or your idea is seen to be useless? Does your business model make sense to your customer? Is your value proposition attractive enough? Is your pricing correct? Is your credibility sufficient to win the trust of potential customers?
You may be targeting the wrong market
People cannot buy products and services that they are not aware exist. Well, you may be strongly marketing your business but still missing the mark because you are not targeting the right people.
Your brand building and marketing efforts might not be reaching the people who are likely to have the most interest in your product. Increasing your marketing spend while still maintaining a similar marketing vehicle may be what is causing your target customers to not look in your direction.
Define the key demographic of your target audience and tailor both your brand and advertising to address their needs, in a way that they welcome it.
Select the right marketing channels that ensure that your brand will be visible to people it is supposed to persuade. If your target customers are online, no number of billboards will get the information to them.
Some products are best suited for the online market, while others will sell more where customers can see them in a physical store. Your targeted clients may not be understanding your business because the message you are sending out is not getting to them.
Your products or services are not accessible
Customers will not have the opportunity to understand your business if it is not available to them. They cannot buy something inaccessible. They may have heard about your brand from your excellent marketing efforts, but if they cannot access the product, you might as well forget it.
Accessiblity means the following things:
- Your product needs to be available to purchase
- Your services can be rendered for them
- The price point is suitable for your customers
- They can pay with their preferred payment methods
People want to engage with a product that they can obtain and use easily. Try to make your products more accessible by having them in different locations and working on your distribution channels. Perhaps, you could make the product available online for it to reach a wider audience. If you feel like your consumers do not fully understand your business concept, you may want to analyze the accessibility of your service or product to see where to make changes.
Your brand experience and customer engagement sucks
For customers to understand your business and report great experiences, you need to provide channels for them to pose their questions and share their insights. Prioritize offering the best customer experience to ensure that you retain the customers and bring in more revenue.
With all thanks to technological advancements, there are new tools available that enable smoother engagement with customers. It is now possible to engage with potential customers in real-time. You can use Brand Auditor to get real insights about customer’s perceptions of your brand. These channels are excellent for getting customer insight.
When you fail to utilize these tools, you are at risk of customers not understanding your business. Opportunities for engagement are a great way to explain to your customers more about your products or services. You can clear any doubts they have as you explain the benefits they can get from your business.
You fail to communicate the value of your products and services
While price is a huge determining factor to whether people buy a product or not, customers do not acquire items solely based on price. You may be offering the best price in the market, but if you are not fully explaining how the product will better the lives of the targeted market, you are missing the mark. Try to have a keen focus on highlighting the benefits your products will afford anyone who purchases them.
Ensure that your marketing message emphasizes the potential benefits anyone is missing from not using your product. That will pique their interest in the product or service. You can make a list of all the gains they can expect and amplify that in your marketing message. Maybe, just maybe, your customers are not understanding your products because you are not communicating the value of the products to them.
You do not have specific buyer personas
One of the mistakes that most businesses make when marketing their products is using more general demographics like age, location, or profession to create buyer personas. These characteristics do not cut it in providing the best messaging that will resonate with the target audience. You can use tools like Google Analytics to understand your customer preferences. Dig deeper to know which outlets or which social media platform drives the most traffic to your business. Applying this information will help you identify the most effective ways to reach your audience.
You could also get keyword data to help you know which descriptions different buyer personas use to describe your business. For this, you can employ Google Search Central Tool to help you make a list of the most popular keywords that bring people to your site. When you narrow down messaging to specific buyers other than opting for a more general approach, you are more likely to help more customers understand your business.
Wrapping up
Sales and profitability in any business can only be realized if the customers fully understand the business concept. They are more willing to recommend your company to their friends and family if they get it and believe in it!