Be Where Your Customers Are

 

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If a group of golf instructors sat around discussing golf swing techniques and equipment with each other, instead of going out and teaching people how to master golf, how long do you think they would stay in business?

Exactly.

Let me tell you a short little story. Freelance Folder is one of the sites I subscribe to for two reasons: First, I am a freelance blog coach/consultant, so the content is relevant to me personally. Second, other freelancers and consultants are my client base, and you want to be where your customers are, in order to place yourself in front of them so they are aware of you and what you can do for them.

Here’s the story: I was looking over Freelance Folder’s blogroll and followed a link to the site Business Idea of the Day, which does exactly what it sounds like. In the recent comments, I saw that Loic Lemeur had commented about an idea involving video conversations. I know Loic has just started up a new company that deals in video messaging (somewhat like Twitter for video). That I see his name involved in this conversation means one of two things: Loic is already a subscriber and commenter on Business Idea of the Day, or, Loic has something like Google Alerts set up so that when anyone has a conversation about video messaging, Loic can place himself (and therefore his company, brand, and services) in the middle of that conversation.

Loic is going where his customers are.

Be where your customers are:

• Find out where they hang out online, and you hang out there, too.
• Learn what their desires are, what their pain points are.
• When you engage with them or blog, entice their desires, and poke at their pain points.
• Don’t oversell yourself.
• In fact, you likely won’t have to sell yourself at all. If you are truly engaged in the conversation and are contributing strong value to it, that is all the “selling” you need do.

All this begins with you being where your customers are, so get out there.