Who’s Your Customer?

One of the things Michael and I did when we decided to take the first step towards our cat café was to take a free online course from Udacity on How to Build a Startup. I admit, we didn’t get through the entire thing – it was quite a lot of information for someone new to entrepreneurship. But one of the main points we took away from it was how to identify our customers. This permanently altered the way we thought about doing business.  

The course centers around the Business Model Canvas. The Business Model Canvas is a framework that makes you detail the who, what, where, when, why, and how of your business. The first thing you focus on when tackling this worksheet was the customer. Who are your customers? Why are they visiting your business? What need are you fulfilling in your customer? You should know your customer so well that you can visualize them, maybe even give them a name.  

Now, of course, when you start a business, you don’t know anything. You might have an idea of who your customer might be, but at the beginning, there’s a lot of uncertainty. So what do you do then?
Get answers! Literally go find your customers and ask them.

Ways you can find customers:

1. Your family and friends: Believe it or not, those closest to you can give you the most clarity. If they’re true blue fans, they want to hear what you have planned and will likely provide suggestions. If they’re hardcore skeptics and have no idea why you’re opening this business, it gives you a chance to pitch your business and try to change their mind. Even if they’re not a customer – not everyone has to be! – at least they can learn more and understand why this business would be attractive to other people.
2. Networking: Is there a local conference or meeting where people from the same industry gather? This could be a prime way to gauge what professionals who have a deeper understanding of your business think about your idea.
3. Online surveys: Surveys are a great way to collect information from a lot of different people. Online, people feel comfortable speaking freely – even if it means letting you know they aren’t interested in what you’re selling. An interesting outcome from surveys is that there will likely be an answer you weren’t anticipating, whether it’s understanding a question differently from how you meant it, or inspiring an idea that you weren’t expecting. For example, “You’re opening a cat café - will you sell cat toys?” We hadn’t thought about that possibility when we sent out survey out in the world. One additional note about this topic - you need to have an idea of where you can publicize this survey. You can post it on forums like reddit or you can use…
4. Social media. Social media is both a wondrous and confusing thing. Sometimes pages blow up and gain thousands of followers. Sometimes pages stagnate. There are different reasons for it. But staking your claim on your piece of internet real estate can provide some credibility to your business, even if it’s still just an idea. This also allows you to communicate with other people and businesses and share your survey.

Now you have some information about your customers. Great! You may find that you’ll refine and adjust as you continue down your path, and that’s to be expected. As you progress, as you grow, you may add new services, new products or new experiences and you can always return to the first question – who is my customer?