1- Defining your Business and the Target Market
There was a study done by Annals of Internal Medicine that showed 37 million people used cannabis in 2017 in the US alone. Not all people use cannabis the same way, or for the same purpose. This is why it is hard for any business to be all things for every user out there.
One of the most important things, when starting and growing a stable and profit-generating business, is deciding what your business will offer and who to target. Are your products recreational or medicinal? Is your target market a business supplying consumers or direct marketing to cannabis consumers? Will your business model be higher volumes for lower costs or higher costs for a lower volume because they are premium products?
The CANN and Co website says it is important to answer these questions although it might take some time and research, it will be worth it in the end. The number of options in productions and consumption of cannabis is ever-increasing, and this can easily make you get lost in the possibilities and increasing the risks of spreading efforts too thinly across the different funnels.
2- Monitoring Customer and Being Prepared for Change
While it is important to define your business and identify your target market before launching, you should do it lightly. You should not have too much investment in a given funnel until you have gotten feedback from some of your first customers and knowing the concrete specifics to what they are looking for and how they use and view your products.
When launching StickerYou, the team thought the customer base would consist of kids and creatives. They were right, but they were missing the bigger part of the picture. When the team looked at the initial customer base, they found that business customers were using the products to brand ad market, and this segment was way bigger than consumer customers by a ratio of 4:1. The next step was to modify the marketing strategies to engage with the customer base that wasn’t in the plan at first, and this allowed the business to grow numbers in the new segment.
3- Improving Customer Experience
Once you have the target market in place, look for ways of improving their experience with your business. You should look for ways of getting customer feedback online. If it a brick and mortar business, then you can ask the customer in person or even teach the team to ask questions that will allow you to know what the customers think about the products and how you can improve on customer experience. Investing in customer service can be great for your business.
Be curious. Are customers interested in what you are offering because of convenience or quality? How did they find you? Was it through marketing efforts or word of mouth? This type of information can help you create and maintain an accurate profile of your customer, and you will be able to come with ways of catering to their needs.
4- Experimenting, Measuring, Repeat
Experimenting is one of the most important aspects of growing a business. It is also important to measure whether your efforts are working. Basing on your customer feedback, experiment the different strategies and methods to use to grow the business.
When you implement new ideas, make sure you have set specific goals and have ways of measuring whether these goals have or haven’t been achieved. Learn more about basic research principles, then use them on trial runs. Run the test of new strategies and products on the different segment of your customer base. When you test and measure the results of new ideas, you will gain a better understanding of how to grow the business.
When you define the business, learn about the customer base, work on improving customer experiencing, and testing new strategies, you will be able to build a strong base for your business and you will stand out from the rest.
