Don’t run behind customers, run behind your product

Learn why you should focus on your product rather than your customers first.

People are too used to saying, “In business, customer is king!”. I completely agree to that, and yes we should be keen in handling each and every customer and lead of ours. But, I feel our products are the kingdom, to which we should put more care and love.

Few years back, organizations that built products, used various strategies to fish for their customers, and one among them was attaching product catalogs along with a letter and sending it to all its potential leads. That strategy was perfect back then, when there was no proper communication medium like the Internet for them to explore, and customers were not aware of new products on the market. So they used to get impressed by catalogs and respond to them with a curiosity to know what it is up to.

But, in the era of the Internet these kind of methods and strategies work out only in rare cases. But today what we should do is,

To sell your product, you should not search for customers who can buy it. Instead, you should make customers search for your product.

Today if a person needs something all he/she has to do is a Google search for it. They don’t even have to struggle to find the best product, it’s so obvious that the best product is mostly the one at the top of their search results. Here, you didn’t search for your target customer, instead customers searched for a solution and found your product.

Today Slack is being used by NASA. It’s only because of their quality, not because of the huge customer base that Slack has.

How do I do this ?

You must be wondering now, with a most generic question in mind how do I do this? Let’s consider that your product is a web based solution.

Every visit for your website has a reason behind it, no one is visits just to admire the design it has.

There are three major things that need to be focussed on. And they are not that hard to do.

Search Engine Optimization

90% of your leads start out with a simple search in popular search engines. They shout out their problem as a search query and the engine generates a set of solutions for them. If your product can solve their problem, it should be on the top. Simple.

Storytelling

So now they reach your page, what’s next ? Are you going to bore them with some beautifully crafted content? They won’t give a damn.

All they need is to know is whether this product is the best solution for them, or not. That’s all it’s going to be. They are not coming here as a Shakespeare fan — they are coming here with a problem.

Tell them a story of how your product works, make them feel this is for them, make them understand this is the right solution!

Here are some examples.

Allt.in’s landing page. Lets users try features on the homepage.

Make them feel at home

Ok, now they’ve started using your platform. They can either be happy or indifferent using it. But no matter what, strike a conversation. Ask them if they are feeling good, suggest them an action that they can do on your platform.

These little interactions will help them feel like they are not alone using the product. This prompts them to look back at the product, and maybe even use it everyday.

Keep them informed

Either if it’s sending them an email, or notifying them about a change in the product or your policies — inform them. The single reason why products fail is because the team forgets to keep their customers in conversation. It should not be one way interaction with your product. When you redesign your product, email your customer that there’s something new waiting for them, go ahead and ask them how they feel about it.

Add a mini reaction button, emojis go further than text!

And if many people respond negatively, you know something needs to be fixed. Now your users feel happy that the product aligns to them, and you can rest in peace that you aren’t wasting man hours working on a feature that none of your users will use.

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