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3 MIN. READ
You might have a strong sales pitch, a quality product and a competitive price, but sales might elude you until you find the right audience for your message.
Identifying new opportunities for growth is often a matter of figuring out who needs the products or services you’re selling.
Read on to learn how.
Your customer data can show you which audience segments have been most profitable for you historically.
Consider the size of your best customers, their location, their target audience, the ways your products or services benefit them, and their growth stage. Look at factors like exceptionally large sales, long-term relationships and upgrades.
You can also use data from your marketing and lead nurturing efforts to develop a profile for the leads that are more likely to convert.
IndustrySelect can help you simplify this process through its new Customer Match function, available to all subscribers.
Customer Match can transform and expand your current customer list by leveraging IndustrySelect’s comprehensive business database to update/enhance your customer data and find new prospects like them.
Customer Match takes your current customer data and gleans new and actionable insights on your customers you didn’t already have.*
In addition to giving you a more complete picture of who your customers really are, the service also provides a list of new prospects based on the profiles of your best customers.
New to IndustrySelect? Learn more here.
It’s true that casting a wide net can increase awareness for your business, and it might result in some sales since you'll eventually encounter a client who needs what you offer.
But considering everyone a potential buyer isn’t a viable strategy. Your sales team will always be busy and lack focus on nurturing leads and providing the kind of value that retains customers. Remember that 80% of new leads don’t translate into sales. The wider your audience, the more time and resources you're spending on leads that won’t convert.
Being effective doesn’t stop at focusing on a smaller target audience. You also need to consider factors like market saturation, price competitiveness, and the long-term outlook for your target market. Just because a need exists in a specific market doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a profitable opportunity.
Identifying a need for your product or service
Market research lets you focus on the industries or company profiles that are most likely to need your products or services. It can also help you tailor marketing and sales messages to different industries or profiles.
Here are some resources you can use:
• Data about nationwide industry trends and projected growth helps you assess profitability.
• Sales trends from your customer base reflect a need in a specific industry.
• Studies from professional organizations discuss top challenges to address.
• Customer satisfaction surveys and interviews with customers identify key benefits.
• Industry news informs you about emerging or changing needs.
Some products and services have obvious target markets, and it’s easy to overlook niche uses. Focusing on niche markets can give you a competitive edge and help you achieve growth goals. Examine your current customer data and identify any outliers. A customer with an industry or profile that differs from others might indicate an untapped market to explore.
Keyword research surrounding questions and long-tail keywords might unveil pain points your products and services can address among users you've never considered part of your target audience. Further, by thoroughly understanding the problems your customers solve using your products or services, you can uncover new niches through a process of association. Ask yourself, What other niches have these problems?
IndustrySelect has the capability to narrow your contact list to extremely specific market segments. When you need a contact database for a niche market, our experts pull information from audience segments with demand for your products of services.
Let’s say you sell wood crates. The wine and beverage industry is an obvious market to target, but the contact database we would provide would also include companies in sectors like medical equipment, furniture manufacturing, paper and packing, relocation services, and more.
Our unique system offers 11,000 product and service categories to refine audience targeting, and you can also search for contacts by SIC codes if you want to target a specific sector.
Sign up for a free demo to see for yourself how our system can help you uncover new niches and target the right leads.
*Your customer file will remain confidential, used solely for purposes of matching against our database. We're only interested in getting you the best data possible!
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