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Ah, customers. They’re the lifeblood of your business, they’re your compass. They’ll tell you where the pain is, and if you listen closely, they’ll let you know exactly how to solve it. Your job? Be the painkiller they can’t live without.
Whether you’re a dinghy-sized startup or a well-armed freighter, customers guide you toward safe, profitable shores. The question is: how do you find them?
Go Where They Complain (and Listen Like You Mean It)
We’re all humans here. As much as we roll with the punches of starting our own business, that can be hard on us, and we may rant about it. Sometimes, we’ll want to rant about what causes some of that pain publicly. My friend, that is where you want to be.
Every industry has its gathering spots for grumbles. LinkedIn, X (Twitter), Reddit, and niche Slack communities are where the real market research happens.
If you serve other businesses, this can be invaluable word-of-mouth feedback to point you in the revenue direction. When someone shares their frustrations, resist the urge to jump in with a pitch right away. Ask questions. As humans, we often feel relieved to have someone lend us their ear. This can be a fantastic way for you to develop new customer relationships and nurture existing ones.
Once you have helped them solve that problem, make it easy for them to tell their network. Shareable case studies, simple testimonial prompts, or even a ready-to-go blurb can turn a happy customer into your loudest advocate.
Create Content They Want to Share
Customers appreciate content that provides value to them or their industry circles. High-quality, high SEO-ranking content can serve as a practical referral for your business and continue to serve potential customers for months. As a business founder, you want to not only foster relationships with the businesses you serve but also make it easy for them to cultivate their own relationships.
Let’s say your potential customer serves founders (hey, we do that too). When you provide them content they can share with their customers, like what to expect when building a remote team, or how to wrap their heads around the daily chaos of running a startup, you’re absolutely making their lives easier, and they’ll take notice.
Go beyond the standard “what we do” blog post. Try a beginner’s guide for industry newcomers that mentors can share, practical resources for your customers’ customers, or timely commentary on industry shifts. When your content makes their lives easier, you are building more than brand awareness. You are creating a distribution network.
Imagine the number of eyes on your content. Can you picture it? Yeah. Me too.
Build Relationships With Integration Partners
Let’s not forget, customers are more likely to commit to a solution when it integrates with other highly useful solutions. Here’s where you take advantage of a situation where you and another business share a good amount of customers.
How do you know if their customers are necessarily your customers, too? Research and find out how much, if any, your two solutions overlap, and where there’s space for co-promoting. Choose integration partners whose customer base fits the buyer persona you’re aiming to target.
When another business product integrates with your product, their customers may find a happy hybrid solution using both services in a way they’ve wanted – or seriously needed. A happy customer is more likely to promote your product when it plays nice with the service they’ve committed to using.
Choosing an integration option can also be a customer’s first time hearing about your solution. Oftentimes, you’re permitted a small real estate space to provide a logo and a brief blurb about what your solution does best. Spend some time boiling down your biggest pain-killer into a pill-sized description that a partner business could easily display within their product’s options.
If it’s a good integration fit for both products, it adds value to both your integration partner and to their customers—a win for everyone.
The Common Thread
Whether you are in their social feed, their inbox, or inside their favorite software, the formula is the same. Listen to the problem, add real value, and make it easy for people to spread the word. That is how you turn one conversation into a steady stream of new business.
