No matter what industry you are diving into as an entrepreneur, when you are starting your first business venture, knowing your customer is of the utmost importance!
What customers think tends to come before what they do…unless the customer is an impulse buyer in which case this wouldn’t be your target audience anyway. So, because their attitude comes before their behavior, we need to be aware of the two main types of customer attitudes and make sure that if we are creating a new business, we know how to address them. This will help us reach our goals of getting them all the way through the sales funnel!
Before we dive right into these two types of customers attitudes, we must remember that the first step to knowing how to change these attitudes is knowing our target audience and what their typical initial thought processes are, research methods are, and ways that they end up making an actual purchase are. It’s important to always remember that no matter what industry we are in, we are not aiming to change the attitudes and behaviors of everyone buying anything. If we want to be efficient when choosing marketing tactics as an entrepreneur, we must first start out trying to build their brand awareness; we must start by knowing who our ideal customer is and spend time learning about them. With that said, now we will dive into the two different types of attitudes to pay attention to when designing our marketing campaigns.
These two types of attitudes are COGNITIVE attitudes, based on fact or opinion, and the second is AFFECTIVE attitudes, that are based on emotions.
When I created my professional pet care company, I knew that my customers were aware of the struggles they face when having a pet and having to work all day, or traveling and not knowing how their pet was doing while they were away and hoping for the best, which tends to give them anxiety while they are supposed to be working or focusing on their travels.
The fact is they needed help with pet care, but some customers don’t even realize that pet care is a thing, and if they do then their opinion kicks in and they will research online and through word of mouth from friends to see who is trusted in the pet care industry and why.
In my case, it’s important for me to have social media channels and a website published with our company’s credentials, as well as pictures and videos of pets enjoying their time with us to help ease the anxieties and emotional concerns of the customers that I am dealing with. This allows them to change their opinion from “I don’t trust anyone to care for my fur baby the way that I do!”, to “Wow! They still have a home environment while I am away and I can get pictures, videos, and can even facetime my pet if I want to!”. For my customers that are more concerned with credentials, the opinion changes to, “They have veterinary experience so I know that if anything happens, they will be aware and take the necessary precautions to make sure my pet is comfortable and safe!”
Knowing the needs, and concerns of your customer can help you to know the things that you need to showcase to help ease their pain points and comfort their minds as they enter the sales funnel and start to move into the consideration stage. Allowing them to know what your product/service can do for them and showing them how their lives will be easier because of it, helps them feel more comfortable about making a purchase from you and your company. If you can show your customers that you not only have the solution to their problems but also that you will continuously listen to any feedback they have and strive to make the product/service better for them, you will be successful in changing their cognitive and affective attitudes towards your industry and hopefully your business as well.
Wishing you success!
– Ashley Lee
“Pet Pro gone Marketing Pro”
