Part of knowing your customer (KYC) is knowing your market. Operating in particular markets means you will have particular customers who think, behave, spend and see things differently from others.
Those who shop for clothes most often are going to be different from those who shop for household items. It’s something hard to grasp at first but when you realize that every market has different types of customers, you’ll realize where you might have fallen short in your marketing and branding approaches.
Nevertheless, let’s not worry about that anymore, as there are ways you can fix your KYC strategies by learning your market.
Read About Your Market
It is amazing how much you can learn about your market without ever listening or watching a financial news channel. The trick is to keep reading about your market using magazines, newspapers and journals.
For example, you can learn about your market by going to a specific company that supplies training services within that market. If you work in e-commerce then search for ‘e-commerce training’ along with a word like ‘institute’ ‘organization’ or ‘association’.
Thought leaders would usually have a journal or magazine about the industry and market that you can read free. Alternatively, the usual news media such as the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times and others will give you a good indication of where your market is shifting.
Investigate Your Competitors’ Sales
One great way to figure out how the market changes is to snoop at sales figures of your competitors. Using this Chrome extension EverBee, you can see what kinds of products do and do not sell just by typing in the website you want to explore.
For example, type in ‘Etsy’ and see which products are selling. It will show you sales figures, profits made, the types of products and more. Then you can perhaps change the design of your own products to fit this trend of sales and get on the profit train yourself.
You can also check the sales reports from various companies by going onto their website. If they are a publicly traded company, you can search for their quarterly reports on Google.
Research on LinkedIn
The latest newsroom of your industry is not being broadcasted around the world. It is actually LinkedIn. Here you can find articles, posts, comments and breaking news about your market and industry by brands and top management who work in them. It’s like the new newsroom of markets, sectors, industries and entrepreneurship.
You will find key reports, interesting graphs and articles on the trends and changes in the markets. They are most often insider knowledge. The best part is you can interact with people who wrote these articles on markets and have your curiosity served.
We are so lucky to live in this era where market news, trends and data are actively and widely shared. Use these resources to find what kinds of products are selling well, what kind of shift is occurring in your industry and market changes.