Know and Nurture Your Users and Increase Your Market Share

Elsie, the proprietor of a knitting goods store, was on the inside track. For years, she had participated in the local knitting circle, making friends, exchanging ideas, and going over the in’s and out’s (or rather, the knits and pearls) of the knitting world. So when she opened her store, she knew what knitters want, and did her best to provide it.

Elsie was sure her store would appeal to knitters who already knew her. She was less certain about expanding her market share. Gradually, the business did grow, based on Elsie’s ability to understand and nurture her clientele. Let’s see how.

Increase Market Share by Knowing your Target Market

Business owners like to say they are their own boss. But that’s really not true. If you own a business, your boss is your customer. This is true of brick-and-mortar concerns like Elsie’s, and online businesses as well.

To make any business a success, you have to know who your customers are, how they heard about you, and why they choose to buy from you. To expand market reach, you have to go one question further: how can I reach more people who are just like them?

Conventional storeowners gather information about their customers in a variety of ways – from passing out questionnaires, to observing in-store behavior, to gathering ZIP code information to determine where customers live. Online, getting to know your customers is a matter of smart data analysis. By monitoring your site traffic, and the browsing patterns of individual visitors, you can reveal your website’s most successful selling points, as well as the marketing ploys that have fallen short of the mark.

Want More Market Share ? Then Show Your Love

Now that you’ve identified what works for your customers, it’s up to you to give them more. For Elsie, this meant stocking the right products, and staying open long hours on Saturdays. For you – the online business owner – it might be a faster sign-in process, or a new promotional video. Your site statistics will tell you what’s bringing people to your site, what’s keeping them there, and what’s clinching sales. You can use this data to reach more potential customers that share the likes and dislikes of your current clientele.

Conduit – Monitor Your Market Expansion

Conduit toolbars provide feedback about your customers’ preferences, so you can reach out and conquer a bigger share of the market. With Conduit, you can create a toolbar-based, click-through ad for your site, complete with niche-specific niceties like audio and video channels, newsfeeds, applications and games. Because it was designed with their interests in mind, your site visitors will be happy to download the toolbar. But as site owner, you’ll be happy to have the toolbar in place, because it allows you to fine-tune your site’s marketing message.

Conduit toolbars – and all its individual features – are designed for easy sharing via social networking portals like Facebook. So once you’ve really gotten the “nurture” thing right with your current customers, it’s only natural that they’ll want to spread the word, gaining you new toolbar subscribers, new paying customers, and an expanded market reach.